Mixed solvent exchange enabled high-performance polymeric gels

Polymeric organohydrogels as emerging soft materials have attracted tremendous interests because of their promising applications in wearable electronics, soft robotics and so on. However, it remains great challenges for the organohydrogels to achieve simultaneously high strength , toughness, stretchability, transparence, biocompatibility and temperature tolerance. Here we report a facile one-step mixed solvent-exchange strategy to prepare high performance organohydrogels (or organogels) by regulating macromolecular noncovalent interaction. The obtained poly(vinyl alcohol) gels have highly dense and homogenous structures comprising abundant hydrogen bonds , entanglements and crystalline domains, originating from the strong interaction of polymer-polymer and polymer-solvent-polymer. Theses gels exhibit excellent mechanical properties with a strength (up to 8.39 ± 0.51 MPa), fracture strain (up to 1127 ± 123%), toughness (52.63 ± 1.98 MJ/m 3 ) and fracture energy (up to 16.34 ± 5.6 kJ m −2 ), anti-freezing (−65 °C), long-term tolerance (95% of retention coefficient for 14 d), thermal stability (110 °C), transparence (over 90%) and biocompatibility.