An injectable self-healing hydrogel-cellulose nanocrystals conjugate with excellent mechanical strength and good biocompatibility. (1st November 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Du, WenBo; Deng, Amin; Guo, Juan; Chen, Jian; Li, Huaming; Gao, Yong
• Is Part Of: Carbohydrate polymers. Volume 223(2019)
• Publication Date: 2019-11-01
• Subjects: Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) -- Graft -- Nanocomposite hydrogel -- Reversible covalent bond -- Self-healing; Polysaccharides -- Periodicals; Polysaccharides -- Periodicals; Polysaccharides -- Périodiques; Electronic journals; 547.78
• DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2019.115084
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0144-8617

Abstract

Graphical abstract: Nanocomposite hydrogel derived from diol-containing polymer chains grafted cellulose nanocrystals and phenylboronic acid-containing copolymers showed excellent self-healing, injectability, stimuli-responsiveness and biocompatibility together with good mechanical strength. Highlights: A novel method for the construction of CNC-reinforcing hydrogel was demonstrated. The constructed NC hydrogel exhibited good self-healing and injectability. The constructed NC hydrogel exhibited excellent mechanical strength. The constructed NC hydrogel exhibited responsiveness and good biocompatibility. Abstract: In this work, a novel strategy for the construction of injectable self-healing nanocomposite (NC) hydrogels dominated by reversible boronic ester bonds was demonstrated. Specifically, NC hydrogels were constructed by the solution-mixing of N, N -dimethylacrylamide- stat -3-acrylamidophenylboronicacid statistical copolymers (PDMA- stat -PAPBA) and poly(glycerolmonomethacrylate) (PGMA) chains grafted cellulose nanocrystals (CNC- g -PGMA). Rheology analysis indicated the as-constructed NC hydrogel displayed about 7-fold increase in the storage modulus with a low CNCs loading level of 1.43 wt% in comparison with PGMA/PDMA- stat -PAPBA hydrogel without CNCs. Furthermore, the mechanical strength of the CNC- g -PGMA/PDMA- stat -PAPBA hydrogel was far superior to that of its PGMA/PDMA- stat -PAPBA/CNCs hydrogel counterpart, in which PGMA chains were not covalently grafted on the surfaces of CNCs. Due to reversible boronic ester bonds cross-linking networks, CNC- g -PGMA/PDMA- stat -PAPBA NC hydrogel exhibited excellent self-healing and injectable properties as well as pH/glucose responsive sol-gel transitions. Good biocompatibility was also demonstrated through in vitro cytotoxicity tests.