Fig. 1: Ligament-mimicking hierarchically structuralized hydrogels.
From: Hierarchically structuralized hydrogels with ligament-like mechanical performance
Schematic illustrations of (a) natural ligament and (b) artificial ligament, displaying their hierarchical aligned structure comprising fibers. c Photograph of a hydrogel bundle as an artificial ligament comprising multiple braided fibers. Scale bar, 5 mm. d Cross-sectional scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image of the single hydrogel fiber, parallel to the extrusion direction, demonstrating aligned polymer chains. Scale bar, 5 μm. e Cross-sectional SEM image of the single hydrogel fiber, perpendicular to the extrusion direction, demonstrating PVA–NC hybrid agglomerates within continuous PVA matrices. The arrows indicate the hybrid agglomerates. Scale bar, 100 μm. f Photograph of a single hydrogel fiber. Scale bar, 2 cm. g, h Diagrams showing tensile strength, elastic modulus, and toughness of PVA–NC/FT/S hydrogel (this work), natural ligaments, and previously reported mechanically reinforced PVA-based hydrogels. All the detailed mechanical properties and their literature are summarized in Supplementary Table 1.
