Tough hydrogel with high water content and ordered fibrous structures as an artificial human ligament

Abstract

Natural biological tissues such as ligaments, due to their anisotropic across scale structure, have high water content, while still maintaining high strength and flexibility. Hydrogels are ideal artificial materials like human ligaments. However, conventional gel materials fail to exhibit high strength or fatigue resistance at high water content in human tissues. To address this challenge, we propose a simple integrated strategy to prepare an anisotropic hierarchical hydrogel architecture for artificial ligaments by combining freeze-casting assisted compression annealing and salting-out treatments. The hybrid polyvinyl alcohol hydrogels are of water content up to 79.5 wt%. Enhanced by the added carbon nanotubes, the hydrogels exhibit high strength of 4.5 MPa and a fatigue threshold of 1467 J m⁻², as well as excellent stress sensitivity. The outstanding durability of the artificial ligament provides an all-around solution for biomedical applications.