Slippery hydrogel with desiccation-tolerant "skin" for high-precision vat photopolymerization 3D printing (IMAGE)
Caption
Given the biological structure of human skin for "water retention", we propose a novel bioinspired strategy to construct a spontaneously formed “skin” on the slippery hydrogels by incorporating biological stress metabolites trehalose into the hydrogel network. The interaction between trehalose and water can generate the surface layer with dehydration tolerance in the atmosphere, which results in flexible slippery hydrogels. Combining vat photopolymerization 3D printing and trehalose-modified slippery hydrogels enables to achieve structural hydrogels with high resolution, shape fidelity, and sophisticated architectures, instead of structural collapse and shrinkage deformation caused by dehydration. Thus, this proposed convenient and versatile strategy adapts to manufacture large-scale hydrogels with sophisticated architectures in a long-term process.
Credit
By Desheng Liu, Pan Jiang, Yue Hu, Yaozhong Lu, Yixian Wang, Jiayu Wu, Danli Hu, Tao Wu and Xiaolong Wang.
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Credit must be given to the creator. Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.
License
CC BY-NC