Bioinspired nondissipative mechanical energy storage and release in hydrogels via hierarchical sequentially swollen stretched chains

Henri Savolainen, Negar Hosseiniyan, Mario Piedrahita-Bello () and Olli Ikkala ()
Additional contact information
Henri Savolainen: Aalto University
Negar Hosseiniyan: Aalto University
Mario Piedrahita-Bello: Aalto University
Olli Ikkala: Aalto University

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Nature suggests concepts for materials with efficient mechanical energy storage and release, i.e., resilience, involving small energy dissipation upon mechanical loading and unloading, such as in resilin and elastin. These materials facilitate burst-like movements involving high stiffness and low strain and high reversibility. Synthetic hydrogels that allow highly reversible mechanical energy storage have remained a challenge, despite mimicking biological soft tissues. Here we show a synthetic concept using fixed hydrogel polymer compositions based on sequentially swollen and sequentially photopolymerized gelation steps for hierarchical networks. The sequential swellings facilitate the balance of properties between resilience and dissipation upon controlling of the chain extension. At low hierarchical levels, we show resilience with small hysteresis with increased stiffness and resilient energy storage, whereas at high hierarchical levels, a transition is shown to a dissipative and considerably reinforced state. The generality of this approach is shown using several photopolymerizable monomers.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59743-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-59743-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59743-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().