Engineering a semi-interpenetrating constructed xylan-based hydrogel with superior compressive strength, resilience, and creep recovery abilities

Recent advances in the area of hydrogel synthesis have been directed to enhance the mechanical properties and biocompatibility, which are critical in their use as functional biomaterials. In this work, a green and facile method is introduced to produce a hydrogel based on xylan, a plant-based heteropolysaccharide, that is shown to successfully form hydrogen-bonded, semi-interpenetrating polymer networks with polyvinyl alcohol. Upon crosslinking with sodium trimetaphosphate, the obtained hydrogels achieved an exceptional compressive strength (up to 84.2 MPa at a fracture strain of 90 %), which surpasses any polysaccharide-based hydrogels reported so far. The hydrogels were further shown to have high degradation temperature (350–370 °C), to be mechanically resilient with a form and creep recovery of 95 % (78 % stress after 1000 cycles under 30 % strain) and 98 % in height, respectively. All materials used in the preparation of the hydrogels were non-toxic and biocompatible, which makes the synthesized hydrogels suitable potential candidates for soft-tissue engineering and biomedical applications.