One-step radiation synthesis of agarose/polyacrylamide double-network hydrogel with extremely excellent mechanical properties

A facile one-step radiation method is first developed to synthesize agarose/polyacrylamide (AG/PAM) double-network (DN) hydrogel. Compared to other synthetic methods of DN hydrogels, our synthesis method endows the resultant AG/PAM DN hydrogel with not only top-level tensile properties with a tensile strength of 1263 +/- 59 kPa and an elongation at break of 3406 +/- 143%, but also highest compression properties with a compression strength of 140 +/- 3 MPa and a fracture compression strain of above 99.9%. An expanding-necking phenomenon during compression process of AG/PAM DN hydrogel were observed. We propose a chain pushing-in model to interpret the energy dissipation mechanism accounting for the super-compressibility of AG/PAM DN hydrogel. This novel radiation synthesis strategy provides an insight into the development of DN hydrogels with extremely excellent mechanical properties.