Preparation and Performance Evaluation of Nucleobase‐Mediated Hydrogels Based on Hybrid Crosslinking

ABSTRACT Adhesive hydrogels frequently demonstrate poor mechanical properties; therefore, it is still challenging to integrate excellent adhesiveness and self‐healing properties in one hydrogel. In this work, adenine and thymine were modified by grafting double bonds and then introduced into the structure of the polyacrylamide gel together with N, N′‐methylene bisacrylamide (MBA) using a hybrid crosslinking strategy, and then a series of hybrid cross‐linked hydrogels with adhesiveness and self‐healing properties were successfully prepared. The hybrid crosslinking hydrogel exhibited a tunable adhesive performance and strength, by varying the content of base pairs, monomer concentration, cross‐linker concentration, and initiator concentration. The recommended synthesis conditions for the P(AM‐mAT) hydrogel were as follows: mA‐mT concentration of the total monomer weight 5 wt%, total monomer concentration of 25 wt%, crosslinker (MBA) concentration of 0.5 wt%, and initiator APS concentration of 1.25 wt%. Under optimal conditions, the gel synthesized showed a hardness of 282 g and an adhesive force of 154.5 g. This hydrogel material exhibited excellent adhesion properties to materials such as plastics, glass, metals, and wood, with the best adhesion observed on glass.