Search for: All records

Hydrogels are commonly integrated with other materials. In the one-pot synthesis of a hydrogel coating, polymerization, crosslink, and interlink are concurrent. This concurrency, however, is often inapplicable for integrating hydrogels to other materials. For example, a permeable substrate will absorb small molecules in the solution, causing side reactions and even toxicity. Here, we report a method to break the concurrency by using photoinitiator-grafted polymer chains (PGPCs). A type of photoinitiator is copolymerized with various monomers. The PGPCs are uncrosslinked during syn- thesis, have long shelf lives in dark storage, and can be applied to a substrate by brush, cast, spin, dip, spray, or print. Under ultraviolet light, the polymer chains crosslink into a network and interlink with the substrate. The cured PGPC hydrogels are characterized by me- chanical tests. Furthermore, the PGPCs are demonstrated to adhere wet materials, form hydrophilic coatings on hydrophobic substrates, and pattern functional groups on permeable substrates.