Air-permeable hydrogels through viscoelastic phase separation of aerogels

Nature 2026 Open access

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Authors: Xiaoyun Yan, Shucong Li, Won Jun Song, Runze Li, Aarosh Dahal, Bastien F.G. Aymon, Haodong Hu, Deep K. Malu, Gabriella E. Carreira, Jingjing Wu, Gengxi Lu, Bolei Deng
+18 more Jiayi Liu, Siqin Yu, Shu Wang, Eric Lu, Hyunhee Lee, HJ Xu, Anqi Chen, Yuxing Yao, James H. Zhang, Chen Gong, Y W Sun, Jeong‐Yun Sun, David A. Weitz, Casey O’Brien, Yuhang Hu, Zachary P. Smith, Aditya Kumar, Xuanhe Zhao
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10712-3
Cited by: 1
References: 47

Abstract

Hydrogels are widely used in biomedical interfaces, in which effective gas exchange (for example, O2, CO2) within a water-rich environment is essential. However, hydrogels show intrinsically limited air exchange efficiency, owing to the low solubility (C) and diffusivity (D) of non-polar gases in the polar water medium1. This limitation poses a substantial bottleneck in long-term applications, such as wearable health monitors2–7 and tissue engineering8–12. Existing methods13–16 to enhance air permeability suffer from poor robustness and/or an inherent trade-off between permeability and water content (for example,

Fields of Study & Subjects

Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials Hydrogels: synthesis properties applications Aerogels and thermal insulation

Publication details

Journal / source
Nature
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Volume
655
Issue
8122
Pages
372–380
Publication date
8 July 2026
Language
EN