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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2024 Apr 26.
Published in final edited form as: Adv Mater. 2022 Jul 28;34(35):e2205567. doi: 10.1002/adma.202205567

Figure 6 |. Dehydrated tough gels generate near instantaneous adhesion.

Figure 6 |

(a) Schematic of proposed mechanism for rapid adhesion. (b) The effect of time on tough hydrogel dehydration, rehydration, and swelling. “Regular” indicates swelling behavior of gels as prepared. “TG Films” indicates swelling behavior of dehydrated gels. (c) The effect of tough hydrogel dehydration on the adhesion energy and shear strength to porcine skin after 1-minute of application. Data shown as mean ± s.d., as evaluated by a Student’s t-test (n=3–4 samples/group). (d) The effect of tough hydrogel hydration and time on chitosan interpenetration at 1 minute. Chitosan was labeled with FITC, and the skin was visualized with polarized light. Scale bar = 100μm. Data shown as mean ± s.d., as evaluated by a two-way ANVOA with post hoc t-tests with Bonferroni corrections (n=3–4 samples/group). Key: TG: tough gel; C: chitosan; S: skin. Adhesion tests were performed using tough gels prepared with alginate D and pAAm, and chitosan A as the bridging polymer.