Functional Tough Bonding of Hydrogels on Various Rigid Solids

This invention presents a robust hydrogel-solid hybrid, creating a tough interface between a nonporous substrate and a hydrogel. The hydrogel, composed of polyacrylamide or polyethylene glycol diacrylate, along with chitosan, hyaluronan, or alginate, exhibits over 90% water content and achieves interfacial toughness exceeding 300 Jm−2. Using anchor materials like silanes, sulfides, or amines, this innovation provides a general and practical method for designing and fabricating tough hydrogel bonding to diverse solid materials, addressing challenges in integrating hydrogels with various substrates in fields such as biomedicine and soft electronics.