Gel‐Gel Interface Engineering for the Synthesis of Anisotropic Hydrogels with Designable Polymer Orientations (Adv. Mater. 43/2025)

Programmable Orientation of Gel Networks In the Research Article (DOI: 10.1002/adma.202505268), Tomohiro Takahashi, Naoya Karasawa, and Koki Sano report that the intentional introduction of a gel-gel interface within a hydrogel induces spontaneous orientation of polymer networks near the interface. By employing a photo-patterned gel-gel interface, anisotropic hydrogels with programmable polymer orientations can be successfully synthesized. This study proposes a new concept of gel-gel interface engineering for the development of next-generation hydrogels with designable structural complexity.