Smart Hydrogels with Antibacterial Properties Built from All Natural Building Blocks

Abstract

Smart hydrogels with multistimuli responsiveness have been increasingly exploited as soft matters for biomedical applications in drug delivery, tissue engineering, and bioactuators. While many of the effects have been well documented, the facile fabrication of multiresponsive hydrogels with specific functionality is met with profound challenges, particularly in the redundant synthesis of macromolecular building blocks and the integration of multiple dynamic linkages to construct hydrogel networks. To address this issue, herein, we report a simple and rapid fabrication of smart hydrogels by direct gelation of all naturally occurring building blocks including aminoglycosides, protocatechualdehyde, and Fe(III) via two types of dynamic chemical bonds. The resulting smart hydrogels could perform excellent dynamic features and promising multiresponsiveness to different stimuli including temperature, light, pH, redox, and electricity, and also exhibited high antibacterial activities. This study offers new opportunities in the facile preparation of smart hydrogels for a wide range of applications.