Butterfly Proboscis‐Inspired Water‐Welding Strategy for Hollow‐Walled Hydrogel 3D Stents With Ultrahigh Mechanical Support Capacity

Vollständiger Abstract

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ABSTRACT Hydrogels have emerged as promising candidates for next‐generation implantable biomedical stents. However, the scalable fabrication of hydrogel three‐dimensional (3D) stents with sufficient mechanical support remains a major challenge, owing to the intrinsic flexibility of hydrogel materials. Here, inspired by the water‐welding mechanism of the butterfly proboscis, we report a facile water‐mediated welding strategy for sodium alginate (SA) films, which enables the assembly of fully integrated 3D stents using only water as the processing medium. The as‐prepared solid‐walled 3D stents can be seamlessly converted into hollow‐walled architectures via a metal ion‐induced asymmetric crosslinking followed by solvent exchange. Notably, the hollow‐walled structure enables the mechanical support force five times that of solid‐walled ones, rendering these hydrogel 3D stents highly attractive for biodegradable medical stents. This work provides a versatile and environmentally benign route to engineer 3D hydrogel stents, thereby advancing the development of advanced implantable biomedical devices.