Tunable, conductive, self-healing, adhesive and injectable hydrogels for bioelectronics and tissue regeneration applications
Vineeta Panwar, Anand Babu, Anjana Sharma, Jijo Thomas, Vianni Chopra, Pinki Malik, Swati Rajput, Monika Mittal, Rajdeep Guha, Naibedya Chattopadhyay, Dipankar Mandal, Deepa Ghosh
Abstract
) in these gels is attributed to ionic conductivity. Very few conductive hydrogels are endowed with additional properties like injectability, adhesiveness and self-healing, which would help to widen their scope for applications. While the dynamic Schiff base coupling in our hydrogels facilitated self-healing and injectable properties, polydopamine imparted tissue adhesiveness. The porosity, rheological, mechanical and conductive properties of the hydrogels are regulated by the CMC-dialdehyde-polydopamine (CMC-D-PDA) content. The hydrogel was evaluated in various bioelectronics applications like ECG monitoring and triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG). The ability of the hydrogel to support cell growth and serve as a template for tissue regeneration was confirmed using in vitro and in vivo studies. In summary, the integration of such remarkable features in the ionic-conductive hydrogel would enable its usage in bioelectronics and biomedical applications.