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. 2019 Sep 11;9:13164. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-49675-z

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© The Author(s) 2019

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Physical properties of ND@BSA and Ag-ND@BSA-encrusted hydrogels. (A–C) Photographs showing the homogeneity and flexibility of a guar-based hydrogel embedded with ND@BSA. The hydrogel maintained its integrity when suffering tensile stress or strong elongation along the directions indicated by the yellow arrows in (B,C). (D–J) Photographs showing the shaping and reassembling abilities of ND@BSA- and Ag-ND@BSA-embedded hydrogels. The 2-in-1 or 3-in-1 hydrogels were first cut into four segments (D,F) and then reassembled into one piece through physical contacts as shown in (E,G), respectively. Different types of hydrogels could also be assembled together in a specific shape or arrangement (H,I). Neither deformation and nor rupture occurred as the self-healed hydrogel was exposed to an external force (J).