Tissue engineering is a promising and revolutionary strategy to treat patients who suffer the loss or failure of an organ or tissue, with the aim to restore the dysfunctional tissues and enhance life expectancy. Supramolecular adhesive hydrogels are emerging as appealing materials for tissue engineering applications owing to their favorable attributes such as tailorable structure, inherent flexibility, excellent biocompatibility, near-physiological environment, dynamic mechanical strength, and particularly attractive self-adhesiveness. In this review, the key design principles and various supramolecular strategies to construct adhesive hydrogels are comprehensively summarized. Thereafter, the recent research progress regarding their tissue engineering applications, including primarily dermal tissue repair, muscle tissue repair, bone tissue repair, neural tissue repair, vascular tissue repair, oral tissue repair, corneal tissue repair, cardiac tissue repair, fetal membrane repair, hepatic tissue repair, and gastric tissue repair, is systematically highlighted. Finally, the scientific challenges and the remaining opportunities are underlined to show a full picture of the supramolecular adhesive hydrogels. This review is expected to offer comparative views and critical insights to inspire more advanced studies on supramolecular adhesive hydrogels and pave the way for different fields even beyond tissue engineering applications.

Supramolecular Adhesive Hydrogels for Tissue Engineering Applications.

In this work, several commonly used conductive substrates as electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) under alkaline conditions were studied, including nickel foam (Ni foam), copper foam (Cu foam), nickel mesh (Ni mesh) and stainless steel mesh (SS mesh). Ni foam and SS mesh are demonstrated as high-performance and stable electrocatalysts for HER and OER, respectively. For HER, Ni foam exhibited an overpotential of 0.217 V at a current density of 10 mA cm−2 with a Tafel slope of 130 mV dec−1, which were larger than that of the commercial Pt/C catalyst, but smaller than that of the other conductive substrates. Meanwhile, the SS mesh showed the best electrocatalytic performance for OER with an overpotential of 0.277 V at a current density of 10 mA cm−2 and a Tafel slope of 51 mV dec−1. Its electrocatalytic performance not only exceeded those of the other conductive substrates but also the commercial RuO2 catalyst. Moreover, both Ni foam and SS mesh exhibited high stability during HER and OER, respectively. Furthermore, in the two-electrode system with Ni foam used as the cathode and SS mesh used as the anode, they enable a current density of 10 mA cm−2 at a small cell voltage of 1.74 V. This value is comparable to or exceeding the values of previously reported electrocatalysts for overall water splitting. In addition, NiO on the surface of Ni foam may be the real active species for HER, NiO and FeOx on the surface of SS mesh may be the active species for OER. The abundant and commercial availability, long-term stability and low-cost property of nickel foam and stainless steel mesh enable their large-scale practical application in water splitting.

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2019/RA/C9RA07258F

Nickel foam and stainless steel mesh as electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction, oxygen evolution reaction and overall water splitting in alkaline media

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajps.2022.01.001

Antibacterial biomaterials for skin wound dressing

Wound dressings based on nanomaterials play a crucial role in wound treatment and are widely used in a whole range of medical settings, from minor to life-threatening tissue injuries. This article presents an educational review on the accumulating knowledge in this multidisciplinary area to lay out the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead and ignite the further and faster development of clinically valuable technologies. The review analyzes the functional advantages of nanomaterial-based gauzes and hydrogels as well as hybrid structures thereof. On this basis, the review presents state-of-the-art advances to transfer the (semi)blind approaches to the evaluation of a wound state to smart wound dressings that enable real-time monitoring and diagnostic functions that could help in wound evaluation during healing. This review explores the translation of nanomaterial-based wound dressings and related medical aspects into real-world use. The ongoing challenges and future opportunities associated with nanomaterial-based wound dressings and related clinical decisions are presented and reviewed.

Wound Dressing: From Nanomaterials to Diagnostic Dressings and Healing Evaluations.

Conductive hydrogels can be prepared by incorporating various conductive materials into polymeric network hydrogels. In recent years, conductive hydrogels have been developed and applied in the field of strain sensors owing to their unique properties, such as electrical conductivity, mechanical properties, self-healing, and anti-freezing properties. These remarkable properties allow conductive hydrogel-based strain sensors to show excellent performance for identifying external stimuli and detecting human body movement, even at subzero temperatures. This review summarizes the properties of conductive hydrogels and their application in the fabrication of strain sensors working in different modes. Finally, a brief prospectus for the development of conductive hydrogels in the future is provided.

Development of Conductive Hydrogels for Fabricating Flexible Strain Sensors.

Treatment of wounds in special areas is challenging due to inevitable movements and difficult fixation. Common cotton gauze suffers from incomplete joint surface coverage, confinement of joint movement, lack of antibacterial function, and frequent replacements. Hydrogels have been considered as good candidates for wound dressing because of their good flexibility and biocompatibility. Nevertheless, the adhesive, mechanical, and antibacterial properties of conventional hydrogels are not satisfactory. Herein, cationic polyelectrolyte brushes grafted from bacterial cellulose (BC) nanofibers are introduced into polydopamine/polyacrylamide hydrogels. The 1D polymer brushes have rigid BC backbones to enhance mechanical property of hydrogels, realizing high tensile strength (21-51 kPa), large tensile strain (899-1047%), and ideal compressive property. Positively charged quaternary ammonium groups of tethered polymer brushes provide long-lasting antibacterial property to hydrogels and promote crawling and proliferation of negatively charged epidermis cells. Moreover, the hydrogels are rich in catechol groups and capable of adhering to various surfaces, meeting adhesive demand of large movement for special areas. With the above merits, the hydrogels demonstrate less inflammatory response and faster healing speed for in vivo wound healing on rats. Therefore, the multifunctional hydrogels show stable covering, little displacement, long-lasting antibacteria, and fast wound healing, demonstrating promise in wound dressing.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/advs.202003627

Highly Stretchable, Adhesive, Biocompatible, and Antibacterial Hydrogel Dressings for Wound Healing

Preparation of versatile yolk-shell nanoparticles with a precious metal yolk and a microporous polymer shell for high-performance catalysts and antibacterial agents

In-situ preparation of porous carbon nanosheets loaded with metal chalcogenides for a superior oxygen evolution reaction

Porous carbon nanosheets have the advantages of longitudinal continuity, transverse ultrathin, high specific surface area, and surface atomic activity, as well as the synergistic effect of micro an...

Template-Free Preparation of Hierarchical Porous Carbon Nanosheets for Lithium-Sulfur Battery.

Nitrogen-doped porous carbon spheres have attracted great interest in diversified fields owing to their unique physical and chemical properties. However, the synthesis of nitrogen-doped porous carb...

Yang Du

Papers

Highly Stretchable, Adhesive, Biocompatible, and Antibacterial Hydrogel Dressings for Wound Healing

Preparation of versatile yolk-shell nanoparticles with a precious metal yolk and a microporous polymer shell for high-performance catalysts and antibacterial agents

In-situ preparation of porous carbon nanosheets loaded with metal chalcogenides for a superior oxygen evolution reaction

Template-Free Preparation of Hierarchical Porous Carbon Nanosheets for Lithium-Sulfur Battery.

Molecular Level Design of Nitrogen-Doped Well-Defined Microporous Carbon Spheres for Selective Adsorption and Electrocatalysis.