A novel assessment of microstructural and mechanical behaviour of bilayer silica-reinforced nanocomposite hydrogels as a candidate for artificial cartilage

The complex structure of healthy articular cartilage facilitates the joint withstanding the imposed pressures and retaining interstitial fluid to lessen stresses on its soft tissue, while easing the locomotion and minimising friction between cartilage mates. Avascular nature of this tissue results in unrecoverable damaged lesions and severe pain over time. Polymeric hydrogels are promising candidate materials for the replacement of the damaged cartilage. Hence, a tough bilayer nanocomposite acrylamide-acrylic acid hydrogel reinforced with silica nanoparticles (SNPs) was designed and synthesised. The mechanical characterisations showed a significant increase in compressive strength up to 1.4 MPa and doubled elastic modulus (240 kPa) by utilising only 0.6 wt% SNPs compared to the non-reinforced hydrogel. The optimum amounts of monomers and SNPs resulted in the compression of samples up to 85% strain without failure. Viscoelastic responses improved as the stress relaxation lessened to half in all nanocomposite hydrogels. Diffusion rate theory was applied, and the results showed to what extent elastic modulus results in an improvement in stress relaxation. The proposed hydrogel formulation exhibited the poroelastic relaxation occurred before viscoelastic relaxation at the time elapses under stress relaxation tests. SEM images showed uniform funnel-like porosity with 570 μm thick lubricious layer, which is an important feature to retain interstitial fluid. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy was conducted to characterise the elemental composition within the polymeric macrostructure.