A new review in Supramolecular Materials shows that biomedical hydrogels may become stronger, more reliable and more adaptable when researchers design their internal architecture, rather than focusing only on chemical composition. Hydrogels are water-rich polymer networks that combine the structural integrity of a solid with the permeability and molecular mobility of a liquid. These properties make them valuable for tissue engineering, wearable electronics, bioelectronic interfaces and controlled drug delivery. However, most synthetic hydrogels are randomly crosslinked and structurally homogeneous. Hence, they can concentrate stress at weak points, lack defined routes for transporting water, ions or therapeutic molecules, and lose mechanical or electrical performance during deformation.
In the review, researchers from Nanjing University, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology and Nantong University propose an architecture-based framework to address these limitations.
“We define hydrogels with high-order structures as materials in which deliberate organization across molecular, nanoscale, mesoscale and network levels govern material properties and biological functions,“ explains corresponding author Bin Xue. “Chemistry provides the building blocks, but architecture determines how those building blocks work together. By organizing a hydrogel across several length scales, we can create and regulate pathways for force transmission, molecular transport and biological signaling that a random network cannot provide.”
The researchers mapped four principal construction routes.
“Such architectures could help wearable sensors retain signal pathways during stretching, regulate drug release, control water and ion transport, and present cells with more precise mechanical and biochemical cues,” adds Xue.
Further, the researchers identified obstacles to clinical translation. “High-order structures can change during dehydration, exposure to physiological fluids, oxidation or repeated loading, and small processing variations can alter the final architecture,” says Xue. “More reproducible and scalable manufacturing will require tighter control of phase evolution, alignment, and heat and mass transport. Automated experimentation, multiscale modeling and AI-assisted design may help predict how structure, stability and biomedical performance evolve together over time.”
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Contact the author: Bin Xue; Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructure, Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China; xuebinnju@nju.edu.cn.
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Supramolecular Materials
Systematic review
Not applicable
Hydrogel with high-order structures: from hierarchical engineering to flexible biomedical applications
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.