Anisotropically Fatigue?Resistant Hydrogels

Nature builds biological materials from limited ingredients, however, with unparalleled mechanical performances compared to artificial materials, by harnessing inherent structures across multi-length-scales. In contrast, synthetic material design overwhelmingly focuses on developing new compounds, and fails reproduce the properties of natural counterparts, such as fatigue resistance. Here, a simple yet general strategy engineer conventional hydrogels more than 100-fold increase in thresholds is reported. This proven be universally applicable various species hydrogel including polysaccharides (i.e., alginate, cellulose), proteins gelatin), polymers poly(vinyl alcohol)s), well corresponding polymer composites. These fatigue-resistant exhibit record-high threshold over most soft making them low-cost, high-performance, durable alternatives used those circumstances robotics, muscles, etc.