Structure Frustration Enables Thermal History-Dependent Responsive Behavior in Self-Healing Hydrogels

Biological soft tissues usually execute their functions via nonequilibrium and dynamic structural transformations. By contrast, functional hydrogels are mainly constructed by implementing static and equilibrium structures in the polymer network. Here, using polyampholyte hydrogel as a model system, we demonstrated that the nonequilibrium structure transformation in self-healing hydrogels enables the gels with many new features, including thermal...