Double crosslinking hydrogel with tunable properties for potential biomedical application

Weak performance of hydrogel fabricated by a sole component limits their applications. In this study, we proposed a facile preparation of hydrogels by using three natural polymers, carboxymethyl chitosan, alginate and agarose. The fabricated carboxymethyl chitosan/sodium alginate/agarose hydrogels were further treated by divalent calcium ions to form a double crosslinked network inside. These double crosslinked hydrogels showed tunable mechanical property and the compressive strength ranged from 176 Pa to 685 Pa by varying the crosslinking degree. They also exhibited excellent swelling behavior (more than 1500%), good degradability and good biocompatibility, indicating their potential for application in wound healing, drug delivery and bone tissue engineering.