Muscle-like fatigue-resistant hydrogels by mechanical training
Abstract
The combinational muscle-like properties including high fatigue resistance, high strength, superior compliance, and high water content are highly desirable for various applications of soft biomaterials such as hydrogels. These combinational properties, largely attributed to the aligned nanofibrils in natural muscles, have not been achieved in synthetic hydrogels. Here, we propose a strategy of mechanical training to impart hydrogels with an extremely high fatigue threshold (1,250 J/m 2 ) and strength (5.2 MPa), while maintaining a high water content (84 wt %) and a low Young’s modulus (200 kPa), reaching combinational muscle-like properties with aligned nanofibrillar architectures. We further achieve isotropically enhanced properties by three-dimensionally printing the hydrogels into microstructures.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- May 08, 2019
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1903019116
Entities
People
- Ji Liu
- Shaoting Lin
- Xinyue Liu
- Xuanhe Zhao
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Office of Naval Research