Extremely tough composites from fabric reinforced polyampholyte hydrogels

Abstract

Ligaments are unique wet biological tissues with high tensile modulus and fracture stress, combined with high bending flexibility. Developing synthetic materials with these properties is a significant challenge. Hydrogel composites made from high stiffness fabrics is a strategy to develop such unique materials; however, the ability to produce these materials has proven difficult, since common hydrogels swell in water and interact poorly with solid components, limiting the transfer of force from the fabric to the hydrogel matrix. In this work, for the first time, we successfully produce extraordinarily tough hydrogel composites by strategically selecting a recently developed tough hydrogel that de-swells in water. The new composites, consisting of polyampholyte hydrogels and glass fiber woven fabrics, exhibit extremely high effective toughness (250 000 J m⁻²), high tear strength (∼65 N mm⁻¹), high tensile modulus (606 MPa), and low bending modulus (4.7 MPa). Even though these composites are composed of water-containing, biocompatible materials, their mechanical properties are comparable to high toughness Kevlar/polyurethane blends and fiber-reinforced polymers. Importantly, the mechanical properties of these composites greatly outperform the properties of either individual component. A mechanism is proposed based on established fabric tearing theory, which will enable the development of a new generation of mechanically robust composites based on fabrics. These results will be important towards developing soft biological prosthetics, and more generally for commercial applications such as tear-resistant gloves and bulletproof vests.