Self-healing hydrogel forms strong bond in seconds

The material has numerous potential applications, including medical sutures, targeted drug delivery, industrial sealants and self-healing plastics, a team of UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering researchers reported yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online.

According to the university, hydrogels are made of linked chains of polymer molecules that form a flexible material similar to soft tissues.

Until now, researchers have been unable to develop hydrogels that can rapidly repair themselves when a cut is introduced, limiting their potential applications.

The team, led by Shyni Varghese, overcame this challenge with the use of ‘dangling side chain’ molecules that extend like fingers from the primary structure of the hydrogel network and enable them to grasp one another.

‘Self healing is one of the most fundamental properties of living tissues that allows them to sustain repeated damage,’ said Varghese. ‘Being bioengineers, one question that repeatedly appeared before us was if one could mimic self healing in synthetic, tissue-like materials such as hydrogels. The benefits of creating such an aqueous self-healing material would be far reaching in medicine and engineering.’