Controlled tough responsive tissue adhesion

Tissue adhesion is a fundamental and practically important problem, underpinning board applications ranging from wound management to wearable and implantable devices. Despite the importance, formation of tough adhesion on tissues and other wet surfaces is a long-standing challenge. It is even more difficult to obtain spatial control over the tough adhesion and make it responsive to external stimuli. This talk will present design strategies and material systems to achieve controlled tough responsive tissue adhesion. A family of tough hydrogel adhesives will be shown to achieve an unprecedented combination of cohesive and adhesive properties. Particularly, they can form extremely tough tissue adhesion and respond to external stimuli, contract and heal wounds. Mechanistic understanding will be developed with experimental, theorical and computational approaches. To modulate the tough adhesion, a variety of strategies such as swelling, ultrasound and substrate effects will be presented. This talk will showcase the diverse interplay between the mechanics, chemistry, physics and biology in the development and application of tissue adhesives. The research on tissue adhesion will fuse disciplines and make broad impacts in engineering and medicine.