Self-healing Hydrogels Based on Constitutional Dynamic Chemistry and Their Potential Biomedical Applications

Compared with traditional hydrogels, self-healing hydrogels can restore their structures and functionalities automatically after damage, which have caused extensive concern as "smart" soft materials in recent years. The rapid development of multi-responsive dynamic self-healing hydrogels has been achieved by introducing the concept of constitutional dynamic chemistry in this field. In this review, the current strategies for synthesizing self-healing hydrogels based on the concept of constitutional dynamic chemistry are introduced. including multiple hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic interactions, imine bonds, acylhydrazone bonds, etc. Furthermore, the key factors affecting self-healing properties and the applications of self-healing hydrogels in biomedicine are discussed, as well as the challenge and future development of self-healing hydrogels are proposed .