Robust and smart hydrogels based on natural polymers
Abstract
This review summarizes recent progress of the robust and smart hydrogels prepared from natural polymers including polysaccharides, proteins, etc. These hydrogels exhibit outstanding mechanical properties due to their nanofibrous aggregated microstructures and special crosslinking networks. Furthermore, these hydrogels show some smart stimuli-responsive behaviors triggered by pH, temperature, light, electricity and magnetism. Hopefully, these hydrogels derived from natural polymers with inherent biodegradation and biocompatibility have great application potential in the fields of biomedicine, tissue engineering, soft robots and bio-machine.