Gels and hydrogels articles within Nature Materials

Featured

  • Article |

    Biological tissues are extremely water rich but remain mechanically stiff, behaviour that is difficult to recapitulate in synthetic materials. Here the authors design a hydrogel/sponge hybrid material driven by a self-organized network of cyano-p-aramid nanofibres that combines these properties for biofunctional materials.

    • Minkyung Lee
    • , Hojung Kwak
    •  & Dongyeop X. Oh

  • Feature |

    Kinetic trapping in supramolecular gels leads to varied morphologies and macroscopic properties. Emily R. Draper and Dave J. Adams discuss subtle experimental effects that can lead to reproducibility issues in these systems.

    • Emily R. Draper
    •  & Dave J. Adams

  • News & Views |

    Incorporating additives that contain hydrogen-bonding nanochannels creates nanoconfined polymer gels that are highly stretchable, elastic and insensitive to notch propagation.

    • Meixiang Wang
    •  & Michael D. Dickey

  • News & Views |

    An approach to analyse the deformation behaviour of polymer networks provides an enhanced set of structural information, improving our understanding of the elasticity of soft materials.

    • Michael Lang

  • Article |

    Production of bulk bicontinuous materials is limited by the ability to make uniform microarchitectures across large volumes. Here elastic microphase separation is used to fabricate bicontinuous materials with a homogeneous microstructure, with feature sizes tuned by the matrix stiffness.

    • Carla Fernández-Rico
    • , Sanjay Schreiber
    •  & Eric R. Dufresne

  • Article |

    Simultaneously highly elastic and deformable gels that maintain their mechanical properties have remained elusive. Here, using in situ polymerization confined within nanochannels, the authors prepare hysteresis-free gels insensitive to crack propagation.

    • Weizheng Li
    • , Xiaoliang Wang
    •  & Feng Yan

  • Article |

    Extracting information about polymer network topology from mechanical properties alone remains challenging. Here the authors develop a forensic approach to quantify network structural information by analysing their nonlinear mechanics.

    • Andrey V. Dobrynin
    • , Yuan Tian
    •  & Sergei S. Sheiko

  • Article |

    Hydrogels are promising materials but are often limited by inadequate mechanical properties and time-consuming fabrication processes. Here the authors demonstrate a rapid biomimetic interfacial-bonding nanocomposite strategy for ultra-tough hydrogels with high tensile strength.

    • Bingkun Bao
    • , Qingmei Zeng
    •  & Linyong Zhu

  • News & Views |

    A bicontinuous conducting polymer hydrogel with high electrical conductivity, stretchability and fracture toughness in physiological environments achieves high-fidelity monitoring and effective stimulation of tissues and organs.

    • Youdi Liu
    • , Faheem Ershad
    •  & Cunjiang Yu

  • Research Briefing |

    Three-dimensional printing of hydrogels loaded with fungal mycelium can produce living materials with unique adaptive properties in shapes that are relevant for engineering applications. The metabolic activity of the living mycelial network allows the printed structure to grow autonomously and self-regenerate when it is provided with nutrients in water.

  • Comment |

    Soft matter has evolved considerably since it became recognized as a unified field. This has been driven by new experimental, numerical and theoretical methods to probe soft matter, and by new ways of formulating soft materials. These advances have driven a revolution in knowledge and expansion into biological and active matter.

    • David A. Weitz

  • News & Views |

    A simple one-step method that enables the random copolymerization of two monomers with different solubility in ionic liquids creates phase-separated elastic and stiff domains that result in ultra-tough and stretchable ionogels.

    • Gi Doo Cha
    •  & Dae-Hyeong Kim

  • News & Views |

    Slow, tunable dissociation of non-covalent host–guest complexes confers supramolecular polymer networks with excellent compressive strength and self-recovery.

    • Matthew J. Webber

  • News & Views |

    A synthetic matrix recapitulates fundamental biological interactions of pancreatic cancer to facilitate the culture of mouse and human pancreatic organoids.

    • Sohini Khan
    •  & Hervé Tiriac

  • Article |

    Elastomers swollen with solvent repeatedly snap back and forward as the solvent evaporates, which is harnessed to fabricate polymeric devices that jump autonomously.

    • Yongjin Kim
    • , Jay van den Berg
    •  & Alfred J. Crosby

  • Article |

    A graphene nanocomposite hydrogel showing anisotropic swelling is used to realize an electrically conducting and removable bioadhesive that improves the mechanical and electrical integration of bioelectronics devices with wet dynamic tissues.

    • Jue Deng
    • , Hyunwoo Yuk
    •  & Xuanhe Zhao

  • News & Views |

    Materials that permit spatiotemporal control of biomolecule presentation have long been a challenge in the field. A method has now been developed to reversibly pattern cell-laden hydrogels with site-specifically immobilized proteins using sortase-mediated transpeptidation without compromising bioactivity.

    • Jonathan H. Galarraga
    •  & Jason A. Burdick

  • Article |

    Viscoelastic phase separation of colloidal suspensions can be interrupted to form gels either by glass transition or crystallization. A kinetic pathway to spontaneously form network or porous structures made of metallic and semiconducting crystals is proposed.

    • Hideyo Tsurusawa
    • , John Russo
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • News & Views |

    A plant-inspired approach can be used to print hydrogels that dynamically change shape on immersion in water in order to yield prescribed complex structures.

    • Michael D. Dickey

  • News & Views |

    Biophysical factors in an optimized three-dimensional microenvironment enhance the reprogramming efficiency of human somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells when compared to traditional cell-culture substrates.

    • Oscar J. Abilez
    •  & Joseph C. Wu

  • Letter |

    Printed hydrogel composites with plant-inspired architectures dynamically change shape on immersion in water to yield prescribed complex morphologies.

    • A. Sydney Gladman
    • , Elisabetta A. Matsumoto
    •  & Jennifer A. Lewis

  • Letter |

    A hydrogel-design strategy achieves transparent and conductive bonding of synthetic hydrogels to a variety of non-porous surfaces, with interfacial toughness values over 1,000 J m−2.

    • Hyunwoo Yuk
    • , Teng Zhang
    •  & Xuanhe Zhao

  • News & Views |

    Microgel particle precursors bearing peptide substrates for human enzymes crosslink in wound sites to produce bioactive scaffolds in situ that rapidly recruit cells and promote dermal healing.

    • David W. Grainger

  • News & Views |

    Extracellular-matrix stiffness regulates cell behaviour even when decoupled from ligand density and tethering.

    • Sanjay Kumar

  • News & Views |

    Inspired by the chemistry of adhesive proteins in mussels, hydrogels can now be made to self-heal in water without the aid of metal chelates.

    • Jonathan J. Wilker

  • Article |

    Malignant phenotypes in the mammary epithelium have been correlated to increases in extracellular matrix stiffness. It is now shown that the effect of matrix stiffness in normal mammary epithelial cells can be offset by an increase in basement-membrane ligands and that both the stiffness and composition of the matrix are sensed by the β4 integrin. The results suggest that the relationship between matrix stiffness and composition is a more relevant predictor of breast-cancer progression.

    • Ovijit Chaudhuri
    • , Sandeep T. Koshy
    •  & David J. Mooney

  • News & Views |

    Physical cues from the extracellular environment influence the lineage commitment of stem cells. Now, experiments on human mesenchymal stem cells cultured on photodegradable hydrogels show that the cells' fate can also be determined by past physical environments.

    • Jeroen Eyckmans
    •  & Christopher S. Chen

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