The Polymer Society of Korea

Abstract

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.