video: These images were taken using polarized, or twisted, light to visualize areas undergoing stress. (Left) A typical hydrogel has snapped under stress while (right) the self-reinforced gel stretches in spite of the stress, highlighted in red. view more
Credit: ©2021 Mayumi et al.
Hydrogels are polymer materials made mostly from water. They can be used in a wide range of medical and other applications. However, previous incarnations of the materials suffered from repeated mechanical stress and would easily become deformed. A novel crystal that can reversibly form and deform, allows hydrogels to rapidly recover from mechanical stress. This opens up the use of such biocompatible materials in the field of artificial joints and ligaments.
Many of us suffer the occasional sports injury or experience some kind of pain relating to joints and ligaments at some point in our lives. For serious injuries of this nature, there is often little that can be done to repair the damage. But a new development in the field of water-rich polymer materials known as hydrogels could find its way to the operating room in around 10 years or so. And they should stand up to the same mechanical stresses our natural joint and ligament tissues experience too. They're called self-reinforced gels.
"The problem with existing hydrogels is that they can be mechanically weak and so need strengthening," said Associate Professor Koichi Mayumi from the Institute for Solid State Physics at the University of Tokyo. "However, previous methods to toughen them up only work a limited number of times, or sometimes just once. Those gels do not recover rapidly from stresses such as impacts well at all. So we looked at other materials which do show strong recoverability, such as natural rubber. Taking inspiration from these, we created a hydrogel that exhibits rubberlike toughness and recoverability whilst maintaining flexibility."
Previous examples of toughened hydrogels use so-called sacrificial bonds which break when deformed. The destruction of the sacrificial bonds would dissipate mechanical energy giving the material strength, but the sacrificial bonds would take time, sometimes minutes, to recover. And sometimes they would not recover at all.
In contrast, Mayumi and his team introduced crystals which assemble into rigid shapes under strain, but very quickly revert back to a gel state when the strain is released. In other words, the overall hydrogel is extremely flexible at rest but firms up on impact, much like natural rubbers do. The crystalline structures are composed of polyethylene glycol (PEG) chains bound by hydroxypropyl-α-cyclodextrin (HPαCD) rings in a water-based hydrogel.
"As hydrogels are over 50% water, they are considered highly biocompatible, essential for medical applications," said Mayumi. "The next stage of research for us is to try different arrangements of molecules. If we can simplify the structures we use, then we can reduce the cost of materials which will also help accelerate adoption of them by the medical industry."
###
Journal article
Chang Liu, Naoya Morimoto, Lan Jiang, Sohei Kawahara, Takako Noritomi, Hideaki Yokoyama, Koichi Mayumi, Kohzo Ito, "Tough Hydrogels with Rapid Self-reinforcement", Science
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz6694
Funding
This work was partially supported by the ImPACT Program of the Council for Science, Technology, and Innovation (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan), JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP15K17905, JP 18J13038 and JP20K05627, JST-Mirai Program Grant Number JPMJMI18A2, JST CREST Grant Number JPMJCR1992, AIST-UTokyo Advanced Operando-Measurement Technology Open Innovation Laboratory (OPERANDO-OIL).
Institute for Solid State Physics
Research contact information
Associate Professor Koichi Mayumi
The Institute for Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo,
5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8581 JAPAN
Email: kmayumi@g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Press Contact
Mr. Rohan Mehra
Division for Strategic Public Relations, The University of Tokyo
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8654, JAPAN
Email: press-releases.adm@gs.mail.u-tokyo.ac.jp
About the University of Tokyo
The University of Tokyo is Japan's leading university and one of the world's top research universities. The vast research output of some 6,000 researchers is published in the world's top journals across the arts and sciences. Our vibrant student body of around 15,000 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students includes over 4,000 international students. Find out more at http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ or follow us on Twitter at @UTokyo_News_en.
Journal
Science