摘要
It is challenging to realize both high fracture toughness and low hysteresis perfectly in synthetic systems,which restricts the use of stretchable hydrogels in load-bearing applications.Recently,by imbedding the folded polyprotein cross-linker in a percolating random coiled network,Cao et al.demonstrated a highly stretchable hydrogel,which shows low hysteresis(<5%)but achieves high fracture toughness(ca.900 J/m^2).Moreover,the hydrogel shows outstanding anti-fatigue properties with a fatigue fracture threshold of 126 J/m^2.The unique network structure breaks the hysteresis-toughness correlation that is usually reported in stretchable and tough hydrogels.This work has been published in the Nature Communications and can be reached at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17877-z.
