Rational Design and Application of Functional Hydrogels

Dear Colleagues, 

As the superstar of attractive soft materials, hydrogels have been developed and widely studied for the last decades. Due to the advantages of high water contents, tunable mechanical properties and excellent biocompatibility, hydrogels are materials choice for many biomedical applications, such as synthetic extracellular matrix (ECM) for cell culture, synthetic tissues, regenerative medicine and drug delivery. Recently, hydrogel materials were further endowed with more abundant functions including strain sensors, biomedical actuators and soft robotics. In order to achieve the various functionality, the building blocks of the hydrogels, as well as the hydrogel network, need to be designed and fabricated accordingly, following the principle of bottom-up which means that the design and structure of bottom molecules may significantly determine the bulk properties.  

The goal of this Special Issue is to focus attention on the rational design and functionalization of hydrogels. We invite to contributions of reviews and/or original papers reporting new results about the building blocks design, network design and functional design of hydrogels as well as the applications in the field including cell culture, tissue engineering, interfacial adhesion, flexible electronics and so on. Hydrogels formed using various building blocks such as polymers, peptides, proteins, DNA/RNA and composites of them were all acceptable. Manuscripts that address recent advances in the design principle of hydrogels with special properties and approaches to endow hydrogels with new functions are especially welcome.

Dr. Bin Xue
Dr. Yi Cao
Guest Editors

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