Journal
MACROMOLECULAR RAPID COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 43, Issue 15, Pages -Publisher
WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH
DOI: 10.1002/marc.202200196
Keywords
granular materials; materials processing; mechanical properties; microgel-reinforced hydrogels; soft matter
Categories
Funding
- Swiss National Science Foundation [200020_182662]
- Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) [200020_182662] Funding Source: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)
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This study investigates the effect of microgel size and concentration on the processing and toughness of microgel-reinforced hydrogels (MRHs). It is found that processing and toughness depend on the inter-microgel connectivity, while the stress at break is solely dependent on the microgel size.
Rapid advances in the biomedical field increasingly often demand soft materials that can be processed into complex 3D shapes while being able to reliably bear significant loads. Granular hydrogels have the potential to serve as artificial tissues because they can be 3D printed into complex shapes and their composition can be tuned over short length scales. Unfortunately, granular hydrogels are typically soft such that they cannot be used for load-bearing applications. To address this shortcoming, individual microgels can be connected through a percolating network, such that they introduce the double network toughening mechanism into granular hydrogels. However, the influence of the microgel size and concentration on the processing and toughness of microgel-reinforced hydrogels (MRHs) remains to be elucidated. Here, it is demonstrated that processing and toughness depend on the inter-microgel connectivity, while the stress at break is solely dependent on the microgel size. These findings offer an in-depth understanding of how liquid- and paste-like precursors containing soft, deformable microgels can be processed into bulk microstructured soft materials and how the size and concentration of these microgels influence the mechanical properties of microgel-reinforced hydrogels.
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