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A convenient green preparation of layered double

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hydroxide/polyacrylamide nanocomposite
Cite this: Soft Matter, 2015,
11, 9038 hydrogels with ultrahigh deformability†
Lianying Wu,ab Ziqiao Hu,a Guangming Chen*a and Zhibo Li*ac

Received 4th September 2015,
Accepted 20th September 2015
DOI: 10.1039/c5sm02232k
www.rsc.org/softmatter
A convenient green preparation method has been developed to achieve layered double hydroxide
(LDH)/polymer nanocomposite (NC) hydrogels. In contrast to previous publications using toxic organic
solvent of formamide or methanol in LDH exfoliation or anion exchange, the interlayer anion exchange
and exfoliation of LDH are completed in one step with the help of an amino acid (L-serine). The LDH/
polyacrylamide (PAM) NC hydrogels are achieved by a convenient exfoliation–adsorption in situ poly-
merization method. The exfoliation of LDH is characterized by dynamic light scattering and transmission
electron microscopy. Interestingly, the developed NC hydrogels reveal ultrahigh deformability and extra-
ordinary stretchability, confirmed by qualitative images and qualitative tensile and compression tests. The
molecular mechanism for the ultrahigh deformability and extraordinary stretchability is discussed by
crosslinking density, inter-crosslinking molecular weight and swelling tests. We believe that the findings
reported herein will deepen our understanding towards the chemistry of network soft materials
including gels, and further widen the applications of polymer hydrogels in mechanical devices such as
artificial muscles, biomedical devices and drug delivery systems.

1. Introduction performance is still a major challenge. To this end, we have first

Polymer/inorganic nanocomposite (NC) hydrogels have
attracted much current interest due to their unique network
microstructure and super mechanical properties.1–6 In these
NC hydrogels, the homogeneously-dispersed inorganic nano-
particles act as crosslinkers. A unique network microstructure
consisting of a number of flexible polymer chains linked
by inorganic nanoparticles contribute to their significantly
enhanced mechanical and water-swelling properties.1–5 For
example, ultrahigh elongation at break was achieved, which
could reach 1000–3000%. However, only few types of inorganic
nanoparticles such as clay1,2 and graphene3–6 have been
demonstrated to achieve polymer NC hydrogels with signifi-
cantly improved mechanical properties. Common inorganic
nanoparticles including nanoscale silica have been reported
to be unable to fabricate polymer NC hydrogels.7,8 Therefore,
the fabrication of new types of polymer NC hydrogels with high
a
Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), Institute of
Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
E-mail: chengm@iccas.ac.cn
b
University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100049, P. R. China
c
School of Polymer Science and Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and
Technology, Qingdao 266042, P. R. China. E-mail: zbli@qust.edu.cn
† Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: XRD patterns, TGA curve,
and FTIR spectra. See DOI: 10.1039/c5sm02232k
developed layered double hydroxide (LDH)/polymer NC hydro-
gels with extraordinary stretchable properties.9
LDHs consist of positively charged metal hydroxide nanosheets
with a thickness of around 0.48 nm and exchangeable anions in
the interlayer.10,11 Compared with other common inorganic nano-
particles, LDHs have a variety of intrinsic advantages: the consti-
tuents can be conveniently changed; their layer sizes are highly
tuneable; more importantly, they have the unique interlayer anion
exchangeability.12–14 Therefore, they have wide applications includ-
ing catalysts,15 photoluminescence,16,17 UV-ray shielding,18
thermal stabilizers,19 and flame retardancy.20 However, unlike
clay minerals (such as montmorillonite), the original LDHs
cannot be swollen automatically and dramatically delaminated
in water, due to their high surface charge density and strong
attractions between adjacent nanosheets. Generally, formamide
is used as the dispersion medium to exfoliate or delaminate the
inorganic LDH with nitrate as counter ions, and then LDH/PAM
nanocomposite dispersions can be obtained.21 Nevertheless,
formamide is an organic solvent with low volatility and high
boiling temperature (B210 1C), having a strong toxicity to
human health and is poisonous to the environment.22
Green and sustainable hydrogels have received increasing
attention in recent years.23,24 In terms of green and sustainable
chemistry, it is vital to achieve aqueous LDH dispersions directly
in water to replace the toxic organic solvent of formamide.

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Recently, the LDH intercalated by isethionate (HO(CH2)2SO3, Ise)
(LDH–Ise) was found to be easily exfoliated in water,25 and the
aqueous dispersion had high stability towards heating, shear force
and acid/alkali tolerance.26 In a subsequent study, with the use
of this water-delaminated LDH–Ise dispersion, we fabricated
aqueous dispersion of LDH/polymer nanocomposites27 and
LDH/polymer NC hydrogels with ultrahigh stretchability.9
Unfortunately, the toxic organic solvent of methanol was employed
as the medium of the anion exchange during the preparation of
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LDH–Ise. Considering the presence of methanol in its preparation,
the applications of LDH–Ise in the fabrication of novel materials
such as polymer NC hydrogels are not totally green. Therefore, it is
still challenging to develop a new green preparation procedure to
achieve LDH/PAM NC hydrogels.
The aim of the present work is to develop a new green procedure
to achieve LDH/polymer NC hydrogels with ultrahigh mechanical
properties, using either formamide or LDH–Ise. Here, an amino
acid of L-serine (L-Ser) was used to intercalate the LDH with nitrate
as counter ions (LDH–NO3).28 The selection of L-Ser rather than
other amino acids and the concentration were decided by our
experiments as well as the literature.28 Importantly, water was used
as the medium during both the anion exchange reaction and the
exfoliation of LDH accomplished in one step, which is distinctly
superior to the preparation of LDH–Ise using methanol9,27 and the
exfoliation of LDH–NO3 in formamide.21 Because polyacrylamide
(PAM) is perhaps one of the most frequently-reported type of
polymer in polymer hydrogels, it was chosen in the present work.
After LDH–L-Ser was exfoliated in water and the monomer
(acrylamide, AM) was adsorbed on LDH surfaces by hydrogen
bonding, the LDH/PAM NC hydrogels were obtained by the in situ
free radical polymerization procedure. Subsequently, the LDH
dispersion microstructure was characterized. The mechanical
properties including tensile and compression were measured.
Finally, the molecular mechanism of the high deformability for
the LDH/PAM NC hydrogels was discussed based on crosslinking
density, inter-crosslinking molecular weight and swelling tests.
2. Experimental
2.1. Materials
Acrylamide (AM, 99%) monomers and L-serine were purchased
from J&K Technology Co. Ltd (Beijing) and GL Biochem (Shanghai)
Ltd, respectively. N,N,N0 ,N0 -Tetramethyl-ethylenediamine (TEMED)
(99%) was provided by Aladdin. All of the other chemical reagents,
including ammonium peroxydisulfate (APS), Zn(NO3)26H2O,
Al(NO3)39H2O, and NaNO3, are of analytical pure reagent
(A.R.) grade, purchased from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent
Co., Ltd. Deionized water (18 MO cm) for all experiments was
obtained from a Millipore Milli-Q BiocelA10 purification unit.
For the preparation of hydrogels, nitrogen gas was bubbled
through the deionized water for more than 3 h prior to use.
2.2. Synthesis of LDH/PAM NC hydrogels
The inorganic constituent ZnAl–LDH–NO3 was synthesized using
a typical coprecipitation method.19 Deduced by inductively
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Soft Matter
coupled plasma (ICP) atomic emission spectroscopy, X-ray
diffraction (XRD) (Fig. S1, ESI†), thermogravimetric analysis
(TGA) (Fig. S2, ESI†) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR)
spectra (Fig. S3, ESI†), the chemical formula of ZnAl–LDH–NO3
is Zn1.68Al(OH)5.36NO31.18H2O.
The LDH/polyacrylamide (PAM) nanocomposite (NC) hydro-
gels (LmM) were prepared using an exfoliation–adsorption in situ
free radical polymerization method. First, the ZnAl–LDH–NO3
powder was directly dispersed in 1.5 M L-serine aqueous solution
followed by agitation and ultrasonication treatments to obtain
a transparent aqueous dispersion. Next, after the monomer
(AM, 20 wt%) was dissolved in the former LDH dispersion, the
initiator (APS, 10 mg mL1 in water) and the accelerator
(TEMED) were added, and then stirred at 0 1C for 10 min to
yield a homogeneous dispersion. Subsequently, free-radical poly-
merization was carried out in a water bath at 10 1C for 72 h to
afford the NC hydrogels. Oxygen was excluded in the whole
experimental procedure. The compositions of LmM hydrogels
are given in Table 1. The hydrogels were fabricated in cylind-
rical glass vessels (12.5 mm in inner diameter and 145 mm in
length) or rod-like glass vessels (5 mm in inner diameter and
70 mm in length).
2.3. Characterization
XRD measurements were conducted on a Rigaku D/max 2500
diffractometer with Cu Ka radiation (l = 0.15418 nm) at a scanning
rate of 41 min1 over the range of rotating angle 2y = 51–401.
FTIR spectra were collected using a Perkin-Elmer System
2000 FTIR spectrometer for 64 scans with the range of 4000–
400 cm1. The solid samples were ground with KBr (Aladdin)
at a mass ratio of B1 : 100 and pressed into disks for FTIR
measurements.
The contents of Zn and Al were obtained using a diluted
nitric acid solution measured using a SPECTRO ARCOS EOP
Axial View Inductively Coupled Plasma Spectrometer (SPECTRO
Analytical Instruments GmbH).
Particle size distribution of aqueous LDH dispersion (2 wt%)
was measured by the dynamic light scattering (DLS) method
at 25 1C using a Malvern Nano-ZS Zetasizer Particle Analyser
(Malvern Instruments, England).
Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was carried out on a TA
Instruments Q600 TGA/DSC simultaneous thermal analyser,
heating from 25 1C to 1000 1C at a heating rate of 10 1C min1.
Transmission electron microscopic (TEM) images were
taken using a JEOL-2200FS at 100 kV for dried gels (in an air-
circulating oven at 80 1C for 2 days). Ultrathin films (ca. 80 nm
thick) were prepared for TEM observation by cutting dried gels
using a Leica Ultracut S microtome and collected on 300-mesh
copper grids.
Table 1 The composition of reactants for the synthesis of LDH/PAM NC
hydrogels (LmM) with LDH–L-Ser as the crosslinker
Sample AM (g) APS (g) TEMED (mL) LDH (g) L-Ser (g) H2O (mL)
a
LmM 1.5 0.003 4.8 0.09–0.18 0.95 6
a
m stands for the concentration 0.1  LDH/water (g L ). 1
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2.4. Mechanical property measurements
Mechanical tensile tests were performed at 25 1C using an
Instron 3365 testing instrument. The specimens for tensile
tests were of rod-shape with 5 mm in diameter and 50 mm in
length. The distance between the two clamps was about 20 mm
and the crosshead speed was 100 mm min1.
For the compressive stress–strain measurements, the cylindrical
samples of the as-prepared hydrogels were used with dimensions of
12.5 mm in diameter and 10–12 mm in height. The crosshead
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speed was 10 mm min1. The compression strengths were
obtained using the stress at a deformation of 85%.
For both tensile and compression measurements, the initial
cross section was used to calculate the strengths and the moduli.
The tensile or compression modulus was determined from the
linear increase in stress detected between the deformations of
10% and 20%.
2.5. Swelling tests
Swelling experiments were conducted by immersing the
as-prepared hydrogels (initial size of 5 mm in diameter and
30 mm in length) in a large excess of water at room temperature
for 3 days to reach swelling equilibrium. During this period,
water was changed several times. Swelling ratios (Q) are calcu-
lated by the ratio of the weight of the swollen hydrogels (Wgel) to
the corresponding lyophilized gels (Wdry).
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Preparation of LDH/PAM NC hydrogels using water as the
media for both anion exchange and exfoliation of LDH
Fig. 1 shows the preparation procedure of LDH/PAM NC
hydrogels. The amount of starting materials and the abbrevia-
tions of NC hydrogels are illustrated in Table 1. In brief, first,
ZnAl–LDH–NO3, synthesized by a typical coprecipitation method,19
was mixed with L-Ser aqueous solution. The intercalation of L-Ser
via anion exchange reaction and the exfoliation of LDH were
carried out simultaneously in one step. Compared with the two
independent steps of anion exchange and exfoliation in previous
research,9 the fabrication procedure developed herein is obviously
convenient. More importantly, water was used as the media to
replace the toxic organic solvent of methanol. In contrast to the
previous research using formamide to exfoliate LDH–NO321 and
Fig. 1 Schematic illustration showing the preparation procedure of LDH/PAM NC hydrogels via exfoliation–adsorption in situ polymerization, where
water was used as the medium of anion exchange and exfoliation of the LDH.
9040 | Soft Matter, 2015, 11, 9038--9044
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the synthesis of LDH–Ise using methanol as the LDH exfoliation
medium,9,25–27 the present method has obvious advantage in
terms of the levels of green and sustainable materials. Subse-
quently, the monomer (AM), the accelerator (TEMED) and the
initiator (APS) were added. Due to the interfacial hydrogen bond-
ing attractions, the AM monomer was adsorbed on the surfaces of
the organo-LDH (LDH–L-Ser). After the in situ free-radical polymer-
ization was completed on the LDH surfaces, LDH/PAM NC hydro-
gels (LmM, m stands for the concentration of 0.1  LDH/water
(g L1)) were obtained.
3.2. Delamination and dispersion microstructure of LDH in
water and NC hydrogels
The delamination and dispersion microstructures of the
LDH–L-Ser in water and the LDH/PAM NC hydrogels (L1M) are
investigated by DLS and TEM techniques, respectively. As
shown in Fig. 2a, in the glass vial, the aqueous dispersion of
LDH–L-Ser (2 wt%) is clear and transparent, without precipita-
tion or aggregation, at the bottom. In addition, the appearance
of a Tyndall phenomenon, i.e. an obvious red light column
occurred after being irradiated by a laser light, also confirmed
the colloid system. Moreover, quantitative data of the exfolia-
tion and dispersion state were obtained by DLS measurements.
The particle size distribution for the aqueous dispersion lay in
the range between 20 and 70 nm with a particle dispersion
index (PDI) of 0.292. The maxima for the average hydrodynamic
diameters lie in ca. 22 nm and 24 nm. Therefore, it can be
concluded that the LDH–L-Ser was significantly delaminated
and uniformly dispersed in water. The mechanism for the water
swelling and exfoliation of LDH–L-Ser may be ascribed to the
formation of hydrogen bonding as well as the improvement of
water permittivity by zwitterions.28
Fig. 2b displays the TEM image of the LDH/PAM NC hydro-
gel (L1M). The dark areas stand for the individual platelets of
the irregular-shaped LDH–L-Ser dispersed in the L1M. The
dimension of the platelets is obviously less than 100 nm, with
approximately 30 nm in diameter. In addition, in Fig. S4 (ESI†),
the disappearance of the sharp peaks characteristic of the ordered
alignment of LDH nanosheets also confirms the significant
exfoliation in the NC hydrogel. The combination of TEM images
and XRD patterns demonstrate the dramatic exfoliation and the
homogeneous dispersion of LDH–L-Ser in the NC hydrogel, where
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Fig. 2 Delamination and dispersion of LDH–L-Ser in (a) water and (b) LDH/
PAM NC (L1M) hydrogels. The inset image shows the glass vial containing
aqueous LDH–L-Ser dispersion with a distinct Tyndall phenomenon.
the dispersed inorganic nanoparticles of LDH–L-Ser might act as
crosslinkers to greatly enhance the mechanical properties.
3.3. Mechanical properties
Fig. 3 reveals that all of the as-prepared LDH/PAM NC hydrogels
display a high transparency and uniformity with the naked eye.
Neither distinct large aggregates of inorganic particles nor
obvious heterogeneous macroscopic phase separation could
be observed, indicating that the obtained NC hydrogels contained
no frozen structural inhomogeneity. Additionally, LDH/PAM NC
hydrogels did not dissolve in excess water; indeed, they displayed
equilibrium swelling behaviour. These results suggest that a
stable network structure composed of polymer chains and
LDH–L-Ser nanoparticles occurred. In sharp contrast to con-
ventional chemically crosslinked hydrogels, the present NC
hydrogels showed extraordinary mechanical toughness, and
could bear high degrees of versatile mechanical deformations
such as (a) elongation, (b) bending, (c) knotting, (d) knotting
and subsequent elongation, and (e) compression without dis-
tinct breakage or damage. Furthermore, these deformations
were reversible. In Fig. 3a, the rod-like sample of the NC
hydrogel could be easily stretched to dozens of times in length.
The NC hydrogel could also withstand high levels of torsion
(Fig. 3b), be knotted (Fig. 3c), or even knotted and subsequently
stretched greatly (Fig. 3d) without any damage. Additionally, as
shown in Fig. 3e, the NC hydrogel with cylindrical shape could
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be compressed significantly and did not break at all, even at
an extremely high strain. Also note that after the compression
force was removed, the original cylinder shape could be
recovered automatically and rapidly. Therefore, we conclude
that unlike the brittle neat PAM and the conventional
chemically-crosslinked hydrogels, the present LDH/PAM NC
hydrogels possessed extraordinary mechanical toughness
and could withstand high degrees of various mechanical
deformations.
Furthermore, quantitative studies of the tensile and com-
pression properties of the LDH/PAM NC hydrogels have been
conducted. As shown in Fig. 4a and Table 2, the as-prepared
LDH/PAM NC hydrogels (LmM) displayed excellent tensile pro-
perties. The tensile yield strengths and fracture strengths
increased with increasing loadings of LDH–L-Ser. More impor-
tantly, all of these as-prepared NC hydrogels were extraordinary
stretchable. The elongation at break for L1M was 3800%, and
the fracture strains for L2M or L3M were higher than 3950%
and 4936%, respectively. Note that the LDH contents in these
NC hydrogels were very low. Indeed, the ultrahigh elongations
at break for LDH/PAM NC hydrogels reported herein are
comparable to the highest values of the reported polymer NC
hydrogels such as clay/PAM,1,2 graphene/PAM3–6 and LDH–Ise/
PAM9 NC hydrogels. Interestingly, a distinct yielding phenom-
enon occurred in LmM, which has been observed in our
previous research of the LDH–Ise/PAM NC hydrogels9 but was
different from other polymer NC gels.1–6 Therefore, the whole
stretching process can be divided into three major stages. In
the first stage (I), an initial elastic deformation with high
modulus occurred, and the stress increased linearly with the
strain. In the subsequent stage (II), the yielding phenomenon
happened, accompanied by the decrease of the stress, in which
a transiently unstable necking phenomenon could be clearly
observed. In the final stage (III), a stable necking process took
place with an extremely large deformation until the damage of the
sample. In addition, the work of rupture (or called fracture energy)
was employed to evaluate the toughness of the NC hydrogels. The
NC hydrogels reported herein had similar toughness to our
previously-published LDH–Ise/PAM NC hydrogels,9 and enhanced
with the increase of LDH–L-Ser loadings as well.
Besides tensile measurements, the compression tests of the
as-prepared LDH/PAM NC hydrogels were conducted as well.
In Fig. 4b, the NC hydrogels of LmM displayed greatly
enhanced compression properties, when compared with neat
PAM and chemically crosslinked hydrogels.9 The compression
stress–strain curves revealed that all of the NC hydrogels were
not damaged even under a high strain up to 85%, and could
recover to its original shape after relaxation. This also suggests
that the LDH/PAM NC hydrogels had excellent elasticity. In
addition, Table 2 shows that both the compression strengths
and moduli for the LmM hydrogels increased with the content
of LDH–L-Ser.
3.4. Mechanism discussion
To shed light on the mechanism of the ultrahigh deform-
ability of LDH/PAM NC hydrogels, the crosslinked network
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Fig. 3 All of the as-prepared LDH/PAM NC hydrogels exhibited ultrahigh toughness, and could bear high degree of various mechanical deformations
including (a) elongation, (b) bending, (c) knotting, (d) knotting and subsequent elongation, and (e) compression.
Fig. 4 Stress–strain curves of (a) tensile and (b) compression measure-
ments for the as-prepared LDH/PAM NC hydrogels (LmM).
microstructure and the polymer molecular mobility were
studied by means of crosslinking density (number of crosslinked
chains per unit volume, N*), the inter-crosslinking molecular
weight (the chain lengths between crosslinking points, Mc) and
swelling tests.
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The classic kinetic theory of rubber elasticity29 has been
always applied to investigate the crosslinking structure and the
density of polymer based hydrogels,
F = fN*kT (a  a2) (1)
where F, f, k, T and a are the force per unit original cross-
sectional area of the hydrogels, a front factor, Boltzmann’s
constant, the absolute temperature and the extension ratio,
respectively. Here, a equals 2 and the corresponding stress at
100% elongation were adopted. f and T were 1 and 298.15 K,
respectively. As illustrated in Table 2, the N* values calculated
based on eqn (1) for all of the NC hydrogels are low (L1M:
10.7 mol m3, L2M: 9.99 mol m3, and L3M: 11.2 mol m3),
confirming a low degree of crosslinking network structure
occurring in the LmM hydrogels reported herein. As a result,
the inter-crosslinking distances were long. Furthermore, Mc
could be calculated according to eqn (2), assuming the low
crosslinking density in NC hydrogels,30
N* = rNAV/Mc (2)
where r and NAV is the density of the polymer hydrogel and the
Avogadro’s number, respectively. Table 2 reveals that the Mc for
all of the NC hydrogels are high, thus various deformation
stresses could be successfully relaxed to avoid break or damage.
The crosslinked network microstructure composed of long and
flexible polymer molecular chains among the LDH nano-
particles led to extremely high deformability under elongation,
bending, knotting, knotting and subsequent elongation, and
compression (Fig. 3), and further rendered the NC hydrogels
with excellent mechanical properties, especially the ultrahigh
tensibility and elongation at break. Indeed, water molecules
might also act as a lubricant for the hydrophilic polymer
network, and distinctly reduced the friction forces among the
polymers.31
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Table 2 Tensile and compression mechanical properties of LDH/PAM NC hydrogels (LmM)
Yield Fracture Elongation Tensile Toughnessa
Sample strength (kPa) strength (kPa) at break (%) modulus (kPa) (MJ m3)
L1 M 20.9 21.0 3800 36.4
L2M 21.7 433.4 43950 32.1
L3M 26.6 467.0 44936 39.5
a
Toughness was calculated from the areas under the tensile stress–strain curves.
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Fig. 5 Swelling ratios of the LDH/PAM NC hydrogels (LmM) at different
contents of LDH.
In addition, the low actual crosslinking density and high
water absorption capacity were demonstrated by swelling tests.
All of the LmM hydrogels were highly swelled retaining their
original shape rather than obviously dissolved. This further
confirmed the existence of the stable 3D crosslinked network
microstructure consisting of LDH nanoparticles and PAM
chains. Moreover, the swelling tests of the LmM were carried
out, and the swelling ratios (Q) were quantitatively measured.
As shown in Fig. 5, they were larger than 77, distinctly much
higher than those of chemically-crosslinked hydrogels (between
12 and 17).9 This indicates that the NC hydrogels had lower
crosslinking density than the chemically-crosslinked one, since
in the former NC hydrogel, the uniformly-dispersed LDH
nanosheets may serve as multiple crosslinker sites. As expected,
the swelling ratios reduced with increasing LDH content (Fig. 5),
suggesting a reduced water absorption capacity due to increased
crosslinking sites of LDH nanoparticles.
4. Conclusions
A convenient green preparation method has been developed to
achieve LDH/PAM NC hydrogels with ultrahigh deformability.
Avoiding the use of the toxic media for the delamination
(formamide) and anion exchange (methanol) of the LDH in
previous research, the NC hydrogels developed herein were
achieved via exfoliation–adsorption in situ polymerization using
water as the medium of exfoliation and anion exchange of LDH
with an amino acid (L-Ser). Interestingly, the NC hydrogels revealed
ultrahigh deformability towards various mechanical deformations
including elongation, bending, knotting, knotting and subsequent
elongation, and compression. Further quantitative tensile and
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Soft Matter
104 Mc Compressive Compressive
N* (mol m3) (g mol1) strength (MPa) modulus (kPa)
0.64 10.7 9.38 0.43 53.7
0.83 9.99 10.0 0.69 66.9
1.70 11.2 8.96 1.02 78.3
compression tests showed that the NC hydrogels exhibited extra-
ordinary stretchability and compressibility. Finally, based on
calculations of N*, Mc as well as swelling tests, the molecular
mechanism of the ultrahigh deformability of LDH/PAM NC hydro-
gels were discussed. The present research opens up a new avenue
to develop green preparation of novel polymer NC hydrogels with
ultrahigh mechanical deformability, which will deepen the under-
standing towards the chemistry of network polymers including
gels, and further widen the applications of polymer hydrogels in
mechanical devices such as artificial muscles, biomedical devices
and drug delivery systems.
Acknowledgements
G. Chen is thankful for the financial support from Youth Innova-
tion Promotion Association, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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