A Self-Thickening and Self-Strengthening Strategy for 3D Printing High-Strength and Antiswelling Supramolecular Polymer Hydrogels as Meniscus Substitutes |
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Authors: | Ziyang Xu Chuanchuan Fan Qian Zhang Yang Liu Chunyan Cui Bo Liu Tengling Wu Xiaoping Zhang Wenguang Liu |
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Affiliation: | School of Material Science and Engineering, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Composite and Functional Materials, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300350 China |
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Abstract: | 3D printing of high-strength and antiswelling hydrogel-based load-bearing soft tissue scaffolds with similar geometric shape to natural tissues remains a great challenge owing to insurmountable trade-off between strength and printability. Herein, capitalizing on the concentration-dependent H-bonding-strengthened mechanism of supramolecular poly(N-acryloyl glycinamide) (PNAGA) hydrogel, a self-thickening and self-strengthening strategy, that is, loading the concentrated NAGA monomer into the thermoreversible low-strength PNAGA hydrogel is proposed to directly 3D printing latently H-bonding-reinforced hydrogels. The low-strength PNAGA serves to thicken the concentrated NAGA monomer, affording an appropriate viscosity for thermal-assisted extrusion 3D printing of soft PNAGA hydrogels bearing NAGA monomer and initiator, which are further polymerized to eventually generate high-strength and antiswelling hydrogels, due to the reconstruction of strong H-bonding interactions from postcompensatory PNAGA. Diverse polymer hydrogels can be printed with self-thickened corresponding monomer inks. Further, the self-thickened high-strength PNAGA hydrogel is printed into a meniscus, which is implanted in rabbit's knee as a substitute with in vivo outcome showing an appealing ability to efficiently alleviate the cartilage surface wear. The self-thickening strategy is applicable to directly printing a variety of polymer-hydrogel-based tissue engineering scaffolds without sacrificing mechanical strength, thus circumventing problems of printing high-strength hydrogels and facilitating their application scope. |
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Keywords: | 3D printing high-strength hydrogels meniscus substitutes self-strengthening self-thickening inks |
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