基于天然植物骨架构建各向异性水凝胶

Construction of Anisotropic Hydrogel Based on Natural Plant Skeleton

各向异性水凝胶因其有序、取向结构而表现出优异的功能性,在仿生肌肉、致动器、药物递送、柔性传感等领域具有极大的应用前景,然而,各向异性水凝胶的制备方法有待丰富和拓展。提出了基于植物骨架构建各向异性水凝胶的新思路:首先,利用光学显微镜、扫描电镜和低场核磁等表征方法,筛选蔬菜组织中各项异性的结构,确定胡萝卜芯为天然结构模板;接着,在天然骨架中引发聚丙烯酰胺水凝胶的原位聚合,以胡萝卜骨架为模板复合水凝胶,制得各向异性水凝胶;最后,结合扫描电镜和力学性能表征发现,以天然取向结构为模板能够简便地制备各向异性水凝胶,且该水凝胶在拉伸强度、断裂伸长率和压缩强度上均表现出显著的力学各向异性。

Biological tissues including muscles,cartilage and other human tissues have excellent mechanical anisotropy and electrical anisotropy due to their reasonable arrangement of microstructures.The anisotropic hydrogel has excellent function due to its ordered orientation structure,which shows great application prospects in biomimetic muscles,actuators,drug delivery,and flexible sensing.However,the methods to prepare anisotropic hydrogels are limited.Inspired by the anisotropic structure from nature products,we proposed a strategy to build anisotropic hydrogel based on plant skeleton.First,we observed and searched for anisotropic structures among diverse vegetables,and pre-treated them to obtain anisotropic skeleton.Furthermore,the cross-linking of polyacrylamide(PAM)within the anisotropic skeleton was in-situ initiated,resulting in a hybrid anisotropic hydrogel.The anisotropic hydrogel with plant skeleton and PAM hydrogel could be successfully constructed.A highly anisotropy in structure and mechanical property could be achieved.This work obtained a highly anisotropic hydrogel with a feasible method,and we hoped to shed new lights for a novel anisotropic hydrogel construction.