Recently, versatile hydrogels with
multifunctionality have been
widely developed with emerging applications as wearable and implantable
devices. In this work, we reported novel versatile hydrogels by self-catalyzing
the gelation of an interpenetrating polymer network consisting of
acrylic acid (AA) monomers and GA-modified collagen (GCOL) in situ
decorated silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). The resultant hydrogel, namely
AgNP@GCOL/PAA, has many desirable features, including good mechanical
properties (such as 123 kPa, 916%, and 1961 J m−2 for the fracture stress, strain and tearing energy) that match with
those of animal skin, excellent self-healing performance, favorable
conductivity and strain sensitivity as a flexible biosensor, and excellent
antibacterial and anti-UV properties, as well as the strong adhesiveness
on skin. Moreover, AgNP@GCOL/PAA showed excellent biocompatibility
via in vitro cell culture. Remarkably, AgNP@GCOL/PAA displayed superior
hemostatic properties with sharply decreasing blood loss for a mouse
liver incision, closely related to its strong self-adhesion which
produced anchoring strength to the bleeding site and thus formed a
network barrier with liver tissue. This study provides new opportunities
for the facile preparation of widely used multifunctional collagen-based
hydrogels based on a simple pyrogallol-Ag system.