Strong and Tough Polyion-Complex Hydrogels from Oppositely Charged Polyelectrolytes: A Comparative Study with Polyampholyte Hydrogels

Oppositely charged homopolyelectrolytes were found to form strong, tough, and self-healing polyion-complex (PIC) hydrogels, similar to polyampholytes (PA) which have opposite charges randomly distributed on the same polymer chains. The excellent mechanical performances of these two novel hydrogels are the results of dynamic ionic bonds formation between entangled polymer chains. For the PIC system, only interchain bonding occurs, while for the PA system both inter- and intrachain bonding exist. In addition, the ion pairs are expected to form stronger bonding in the PIC system than those in the PA system. In this work, we performed a comparative study of PIC hydrogels with the PA hydrogels. The PIC hydrogels are synthesized by sequential homopolymerization of cationic and anionic monomers at varied formulation, and their swelling and mechanical properties are systematically studied in comparison to the PA hydrogels that were synthesized from random copolymerization of anionic monomers and cationic monomers of the similar formulation. Different from the PA system which only forms tough hydrogels around zero net charge composition without chemical cross-linking, the PIC system forms tough physical hydrogels even at weakly off-balanced charge composition. At the charge-balanced composition, the low entanglement concentration of homocharged polyelectrolyte chains leads to tough PIC hydrogels formation at much lower concentrations than that of PA hydrogels. As a result, the PIC hydrogels are much tougher than the PA hydrogels prepared at the same monomer composition. In similar to PA hydrogels, the PIC hydrogels also exhibit broad dynamic mechanical spectra, indicating the formation of ion complexes with widely ranged bond strength. The PIC hydrogels have strong viscoelasticity in comparison with PA hydrogels. However, the two systems show the similar activation energies of the dynamic mechanical spectra. The SEM microstructural observation shows that the PIC hydrogels have segregated structure while PA hydrogels are more homogeneous.