Hydrogel, an artificial material that can function as scaffolds in our body, have limited their use in biomedical applications due to their weak mechanical properties. Recently, however, a wide range of strategies has been developed to strengthen hydrogels, enabling them to achieve excellent mechanical performance. Yet, many of these approaches rely on tailoring polymer architectures using chain-polymerization chemistries, which makes it hard to be degraded in vivo.
In this study, we aim to develop a hydrogel that is both mechanically robust and biodegradable by using hydrolyzable monomers and forming the network via step-growth polymerization. We first construct a primary network designed to maximize polymer chain entanglement, achieving high strength and elongation simultaneously. We then introduce a secondary, energy-dissipating network to further enhance the overall mechanical properties of the hydrogel.