Plasma-activated hydrogel: fabrication, functionalization, and effective biological model

Abstract Hydrogels are biomaterials with 3D networks of hydrophilic polymers. The generation of hydrogels is turning to the development of hydrogels with the help of enabling technologies. Plasma can tailor the hydrogels’ properties through simultaneous physical and chemical actions, resulting in an emerging technology of plasma-activated hydrogels (PAH). PAH can be divided into functional PAH and biological tissue model PAH. This review systematically introduces the plasma sources, plasma etching polymer surface, and plasma cross-linking involved in the fabrication of PAH. The ‘diffusion-drift-reaction model’ is used to study the microscopic physicochemical interaction between plasma and biological tissue PAH models. Finally, the main achievements of PAH, including wound treatment, sterilization, 3D tumor model, etc, and their development trends are discussed.