Solvent‐Exchange‐Assisted Wet Annealing: A New Strategy for Superstrong, Tough, Stretchable, and Anti‐Fatigue Hydrogels

Hydrogels are widely used in tissue engineering, soft robots, wearable electronics, etc. However, it remains a great challenge to develop hydrogels possessing simultaneously high strength, large stretchability, great fracture energy, and good fatigue threshold to suit different applications. Herein, a novel solvent-exchange-assisted wet-annealing strategy is proposed to prepare high performance poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogels by extensively tuning the macromolecular chain movement and optimizing the polymer network. The reinforcing and toughening mechanisms are found to be “macromolecule crystallization and entanglement”. These hydrogels have large tensile strengths up to 11.19 ± 0.27 MPa and extremely high…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Award: 51873178
• PA
  Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions