雙網絡水凝膠的生物醫學應用

水凝膠是由親水性高分子藉由交聯作用所形成可吸收大量水分子或是生物液體的網狀結構，基於水凝膠的高含水量及其與生物軟組織的結構相似性，水凝膠被視為醫學領域中極具潛力的生物材料。然而傳統水凝膠較為柔軟且易脆，無法提供適當的機械性質來模擬生物軟組織，因此限制了水凝膠在生物醫學的應用範疇。雙網絡水凝膠為近年來所開發的新一代水凝膠系統，藉由高分子材料的選擇及交聯網絡的設計來提高水凝膠的機械性質，使水凝膠擁有良好的強度及延展性，也拓展了水凝膠在醫學上的應用性。本文將介紹雙網絡水凝膠的製備方式、交聯網絡結構及其在生物醫學的應用。 Hydrogels are hydrophilic polymeric networks capable of absorbing large amounts of water or biological fluids. Hydrogel is a promising biomaterial in medicine due to its high water content and similar structure to biological soft tissues. However, traditional hydrogels are soft and brittle, lacking the proper mechanical properties to model the biological soft tissues and also limiting their biomedical applications. Double-network hydrogels (DN hydrogels) are recently developed to improve the mechanical properties (e.g., toughness and extensibility) and expand the biomedical applications of hydrogels through the selection of polymers and the design of crosslinking network. Here, we will discuss the preparation, crosslinking network and biomedical applications of DN hydrogels.