Versatile Hydrogel Ensembles with Macroscopic Multidimensions

Methods allowing construction of macroscopic programmed materials in a flexible and efficient fashion are highly desirable. However, the existing approaches are far removed from such materials. A new self-healing-driven assembly (SHDA) strategy to fabricate various programmed materials by using uniform gel beads (microsize of 212 mu m or millimeter size of 4 mm) as building blocks is described here. In virtue of hydrogen bonds and host-guest interactions between gel beads, a series of linear, planar, and 3D beaded assemblies are fabricated via SHDA in microfluidic channels in a continuous and controlled manner. From the perspective of practical applications, the use of gel assemblies is exploited for tissue engineering with controlled cells coculture, as well as light conversion materials toward white-light-emitting diodes (WLEDs). The SHDA strategy developed in this study gives a new insight into the facile and rapid fabrication of various programmed materials toward biological tissue and optoelectronic device.