Robust super-structured porous hydrogel enables bioadaptive repair of dynamic soft tissue
Siqi He, Weiwen Liang, Youchen Tang, Jinquan Zhang, Runxian Wang, Luna Quan, Yang Ouyang, Rongkang Huang, Ruoxu Dou, Dingcai Wu
Abstract
Well-orchestrated integration of multiple contradictory properties into a single material is crucial for dynamic soft tissue defect repair but remains challenging. Bioinspired by diaphragm, we have successfully developed a robust super-structured porous hydrogel with anisotropic skeleton and asymmetric porous surfaces via integrated molding. Thanks to synergistic toughening of anisotropic structure and Hofmeister effect of amino acid, our hydrogel achieves high tensile strength (22.2 MPa) and elastic modulus (32.4 MPa) for strong mechanical support, while maintaining excellent toughness (61.9 MJ m−3) and fatigue threshold (5.6 kJ m−2) against dynamic stretching during the early healing phase. The mechanical properties of hydrogel gradually decrease during the late healing phase, minimizing its restriction on physiological movements. In addition, diaphragm defect repair models on female rabbits demonstrate asymmetric porous surfaces can simultaneously prevent visceral adhesion and promote defect healing. Therefore, our hydrogel opens an attractive avenue for the construction of biomimetically hierarchical materials to address the stringent requirements of dynamic tissue defect repair. Integrating multiple contradictory properties into a single material is crucial for dynamic soft tissue defect repair but difficult. Here, the authors report a super-structured porous hydrogel that integrates contradictory properties including mechanical properties of high strength, stiffness, toughness and fatigue resistance, alongside biological properties of anti-adhesion and pro-healing.