International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, Volume. 6, Issue 2, 25501(2024)

Slippery hydrogel with desiccation-tolerant ‘skin’ for high-precision additive manufacturing

Desheng Liu1...2, Pan Jiang1,2, Yue Hu3, Yaozhong Lu1, Yixian Wang4, Jiayu Wu1,5, Danli Hu1, Tao Wu1, and Xiaolong Wang1,45,* |Show fewer author(s)
Author Affiliations
  • 1State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication, Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, People’s Republic of China
  • 2These authors contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first-author
  • 3CAS Key Laboratory of Chemistry of Northwestern Plant Resources, Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, People’s Republic of China
  • 4Shandong Laboratory of Advanced Materials and Green Manufacturing at Yantai, Yantai Zhongke Research Institute of Advanced Materials and Green Chemical Engineering, Yantai 264006, People’s Republic of China
  • 5Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region,School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shihezi University, Shihezi 832003, People’s Republic of China
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    Hydrogels inevitably undergo dehydration, structural collapse, and shrinkage deformation due to the uninterrupted evaporation in the atmosphere, thereby losing their flexibility, slipperiness, and manufacturing precision. Here, we propose a novel bioinspired strategy to construct a spontaneously formed ‘skin’ on the slippery hydrogels by incorporating biological stress metabolites trehalose into the hydrogel network, which can generate robust hydrogen bonding interactions to restrain water evaporation. The contents of trehalose in hydrogel matrix can also regulate the desiccation-tolerance, mechanical properties, and lubricating performance of slippery hydrogels in a wide range. Combining vat photopolymerization three-dimensional printing and trehalose-modified slippery hydrogels enables to achieve the structural hydrogels with high resolution, shape fidelity, and sophisticated architectures, instead of structural collapse and shrinkage deformation caused by dehydration. And thus, this proposed functional hydrogel adapts to manufacture large-scale hydrogels with sophisticated architectures in a long-term process. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, a high-precision and sophisticated slippery hydrogel vascular phantom was easily fabricated to imitate guidewire intervention.Additionally, the proposed protocol is universally applicable to diverse types of hydrogel systems. This strategy opens up a versatile methodology to fabricate dry-resistant slippery hydrogel for functional structures and devices, expanding their high-precision processing and broad applications in the atmosphere.

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    Desheng Liu, Pan Jiang, Yue Hu, Yaozhong Lu, Yixian Wang, Jiayu Wu, Danli Hu, Tao Wu, Xiaolong Wang. Slippery hydrogel with desiccation-tolerant ‘skin’ for high-precision additive manufacturing[J]. International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, 2024, 6(2): 25501

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    Paper Information

    Received: Jul. 28, 2023

    Accepted: --

    Published Online: Sep. 6, 2024

    The Author Email: Wang Xiaolong (wangxl@licp.cas.cn)

    DOI:10.1088/2631-7990/ad1730

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