Self-healing hydrogels

Nanotechnology

Polymer chemistry

Limiting

Process engineering

Engineering

Exploit

Biochemical engineering

Materials science

Computer science

Computer security

Scalability

Database

Mechanical engineering

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Significance Many industrial applications often require, or would benefit greatly from, “smart” materials with complex viscoelastic properties. Traditional materials often fail to adapt or respond to changing environmental conditions, limiting their use in many industrial applications that require flow, injection or spraying, or are prepared from starting materials that are too expensive, poorly scalable, or toxic to people or the environment. Here, we exploit biomimetic multivalent noncovalent interactions to build fully scalable hydrogel materials with complex viscoelastic properties from renewable and environmentally benign materials. These low-cost, safe materials have the potential to enable novel applications; here we use them for pipeline maintenance in food and beverage manufacturing and as carriers to enhance the utility of fire retardants in fighting wildland fires.

Scalable manufacturing of biomimetic moldable hydrogels for industrial applications