AUTHOR=Lu Shaoping , Zhu Lin , Wang Qilin , Liu Zhao , Tang Chen , Sun Huan , Yang Jia , Qin Gang , Sun Gengzhi , Chen Qiang 

TITLE=High-Strength Albumin Hydrogels With Hybrid Cross-Linking

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Chemistry

VOLUME=8

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/chemistry/articles/10.3389/fchem.2020.00106

DOI=10.3389/fchem.2020.00106

ISSN=2296-2646

ABSTRACT=<p>Natural protein-based hydrogels possess excellent biocompatibility; however, most of them are weak or brittle. In the present work, high strength hybrid dual-crosslinking BSA gels (BSA DC gels), which have both chemical cross-linking and physical cross-linking, were fabricated by a facile photoreaction-heating process. BSA DC gels showed high transparency (light transmittance of ~90%) and high strength. At optimal conditions, BSA DC gel exhibited high compressive strength (σ<sub>c,f</sub>) of 37.81 ± 2.61 MPa and tensile strength (σ<sub>t,f</sub>) of 0.62 ± 0.078 MPa, showing it to be much stronger than physically cross-linked BSA gel (BSA PC gel) and chemically cross-linked BSA gel (BSA CC gel). More importantly, BSA DC gel displayed non-swelling properties while maintaining high strength in DI water, pH = 3.0, and pH = 10.0. Moreover, BSA DC gel also demonstrated large hysteresis, rapid self-recovery, and excellent fatigue resistance properties. It is believed that our BSA DC gel can potentially be applied in biomedical fields.</p>