Biomedical applications of supramolecular hydrogels with enhanced mechanical properties.

Supramolecular hydrogels bound by hydrogen bonding, host-guest, hydrophobic, and other non-covalent interactions are among the most attractive biomaterials available. Supramolecular hydrogels have attracted extensive attention due to their inherent dynamic reversibility, self-healing, stimuli-response, excellent biocompatibility, and near-physiological environment. However, the inherent contradiction between non-covalent interactions and mechanical strength makes the practical application of supramolecular hydrogels a great challenge. This review describes the mechanical strength of hydrogels mediated by supramolecular interactions, and focuses on the potential strategies for enhancing the mechanical strength of supramolecular hydrogels and illustrates their applications in related fields, such as flexible electronic sensors, wound dressings, and three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds. Finally, the current problems and future research prospects of supramolecular hydrogels are discussed. This review is expected to provide insights that will motivate more advanced research on supramolecular hydrogels.

Porous fibrous bacterial cellulose/La(OH)3 membrane for superior phosphate removal from water.

Lanthanum (La)-based nanoparticles (NPs) are promising candidates for phosphate removal owing to their inherently high affinity towards phosphate. However, significant challenges remain to be addressed before their practical deployment, especially the problems associated with their aggregation. Herein, we fabricated a high-efficient sorbent for phosphate removal through in-situ synthesizing La(OH)3 NPs on a natural support, bacterial cellulose (BC), which is pre-modified with polyethyleneimine. The resultant La(OH)3 NPs-immobilized BC with different La contents (BPLa-X) exhibited a highly fibrous porous structure, in which BPLa-3 was selected for further phosphate adsorption studies. BPLa-3 demonstrated a high adsorption capacity of 125.5 mg P g-1, and high adsorption selectivity due to the large surface area and abundant exposed active adsorption sites for phosphate. Additionally, BPLa-3 also displayed high reusability and still possessed high adsorption capacity after four consecutive cycles of adsorption-desorption. Therefore, the present adsorbent is believed to be a promising candidate for practical phosphate removal.