Stimuli responsiveness has long been a fascinating feature of smart material design. Polydopamine (PDA), a nature inspired polymeric pigment, exhibits excellent photo-responsive properties and has active surface functionality for loading various responsive motifs, making it a promising candidate for the construction of stimuli-responsive smart functional materials. PDA has long been considered as a robust coating material, but its responsive feature has rarely been emphasized in the past reviews. Herein, we present the first effort to summarize recent advances in the design strategies, responsive mechanisms, and diverse applications of stimuli-responsive PDA-based smart materials; the stimuli include light, pH, chemicals, temperature, humidity, electric fields, mechanical force, magnetic fields, and ultrasound. Moreover, the current trends, challenges, and future directions of stimuli-responsive PDA-based materials are also elaborated.

Stimuli-responsive polydopamine-based smart materials

Recently, the development of polydopamine (PDA) has demonstrated numerous excellent performances in free radical scavenging, UV shielding, photothermal conversion, and biocompatibility. These unique properties enable PDA to be widely used as efficient antibacterial materials for various applications. Accordingly, PDA antibacterial materials mainly include free-standing PDA materials and PDA-based composite materials. In this review, an overview of PDA antibacterial materials is provided to summarize these two types of antibacterial materials in detail, including the fabrication strategies and antibacterial mechanisms. The future development and challenges of PDA in this field are also presented. It is hoped that this review will provide an insight into the future development of antibacterial functional materials based on PDA.

Polydopamine antibacterial materials

A solar steam generation method has been widely investigated as a sustainable method to achieve seawater desalination and sewage treatment. However, oil pollutants are usually emitted in real seawa...

A Mussel-Inspired Polydopamine-Filled Cellulose Aerogel for Solar-Enabled Water Remediation.

Boosting Solar Steam Generation by Photothermal Enhanced Polydopamine/Wood Composites

Flexible Polydopamine Bioelectronics

Emergence of melanin-inspired supercapacitors

The usage of exogenous antioxidant materials to relieve oxidative stress offers an important strategy for the therapy of oxidative stress-induced injuries. However, the fabrication processes toward the antioxidant materials usually require the involvement of extra metal ions and organic agents, as well as sophisticated purification steps, which might cause tremendous environmental stress and induce unpredictable side effects in vivo. To address these issues, herein, we proposed a novel strategy to fabricate green nanoparticles for efficiently modulating oxidative stress, which was facilely prepared from tea polyphenol extracts (originated from green tea) via a green enzymatic polymerization-based chemistry method. The resulting nanoparticles possessed a uniform spherical morphology and good stability in water and biomedium and demonstrated excellent radical scavenging properties. These nanoparticle scavengers could effectively prevent intracellular oxidative damage, accelerate wound recovery, and protect the kidneys from reactive oxygen species damaging in the acute kidney injury model. We hope this work will inspire the further development of more types of green nanoparticles for antioxidant therapies via similar synthetic strategies using green biomass materials.

Zhekai Jin

Papers

Emergence of melanin-inspired supercapacitors

Flexible Polydopamine Bioelectronics

Green Nanoparticle Scavengers against Oxidative Stress.