Tough and self-healing hydrophobic association hydrogels with cationic surfactant

Hydrophobic association (HA) hydrogels with outstanding mechanical, rheological and recovery properties were successfully synthesized by micellar copolymerization of acrylamide with lauryl methacrylate. The synthesis occurred at room temperature and the synthesis condition was moderate by using the redox initiator system of Ammonium persulfate - sodium bisulfite as initiators. Cationic surfactant (dodecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide) was utilized to form micelles with hydrophobe, served as physical cross-linking points in the 3D networks of hydrogels. The HA hydrogels showed a high tensile strength of 181 kPa, superior stretchability of 2300% and excellent toughness of 2.16 MJ m⁻³. Moreover, they owned extraordinary self-recovery under different conditions. It is hopeful that the hydrogels with superior mechanical strength and self-healing properties would be applied to the fields of biomedicine and engineering. Meanwhile, based on above materials, HA hydrogels could also be synthesized with the combination of hydrophobic association and other synergistic effects, such as latex particles, electrostatic effect and nanoparticles.