Curcumin-loaded keratin-chitosan hydrogels for enhanced peripheral nerve regeneration.

Peripheral nerve injury often leads to symptoms of motor and sensory impairment, and slow recovery of nerves after injury and limited treatment methods will aggravate symptoms or even lead to lifelong disability. Curcumin can promote peripheral nerve regeneration, but how to accurately deliver the appropriate concentration of curcumin in the local peripheral nerve remains to be solved. In this study, we designed a human hair keratin/chitosan (C/K) hydrogel with sodium tripolyphosphate ions crosslinked to deliver curcumin topically.

Topological Hydrogels for Long-Term Brain Signal Monitoring, Neuromodulation, and Stroke Treatment.

Stroke is the primary cause of disability without effective rehabilitation methods. Emerging brain-machine interfaces offer promise for regulating brain neural circuits and promoting the recovery of brain function disorders. Implantable probes play key roles in brain-machine interfaces, which are subject to two irreconcilable tradeoffs between conductivity and modulus match/transparency.

Electron Conductive and Transparent Hydrogels for Recording Brain Neural Signals and Neuromodulation.

Recording brain neural signals and optogenetic neuromodulations open frontiers in decoding brain neural information and neurodegenerative disease therapeutics. Conventional implantable probes suffer from modulus mismatch with biological tissues and an irreconcilable tradeoff between transparency and electron conductivity. Herein, a strategy is proposed to address these tradeoffs, which generates conductive and transparent hydrogels with polypyrrole-decorated microgels as cross-linkers.

Self-Healing and Shape-Editable Wearable Supercapacitors Based on Highly Stretchable Hydrogel Electrolytes.

Shape editability combined with a self-healing capability and long-term cycling durability are highly desirable properties for wearable supercapacitors. Most wearable supercapacitors have rigid architecture and lack the capacity for editability into desirable shapes. Through sandwiching hydrogel electrolytes between two electrodes, a suite of wearable supercapacitors that integrate desirable properties namely: repeated shape editability, excellent self-healing capability, and long-term cycling durability is demonstrated.

Mechanistic Investigation on Copper-Arylacetylide Polymerization and Sensing Applications.

Exploration of new polymerization reactions is very intriguing in fundamental and practical research, which will advance reaction theories and produce various functional materials. Herein, we report a new polymerization method based on the reaction of Cu and arylacetylide, which generates linear polymers with high molecular weight and low polydispersity index of molecular weight. The Cu-arylacetylide polymerization exhibits different characteristics with traditional polymerizations such as mild reaction temperature, air atmosphere reaction, high molecular weight, fast polymerization rate, and imprecise molar ratio between monomers.