Interfacial Confined Mutual Catalysis (ICMC) Method: A Modular Platform for Scalable Manufacturing of Multifunctional Hydrogel Coatings

The fabrication of biohydrogel coatings faces a trilemma in balancing gelation speed, functional fidelity, and scalability. Rapid reactions often lead to heterogeneous networks due to kinetic trapping, whereas precise methods tend to be slow and difficult to scale. To address this challenge, we propose an Interfacial confined Mutual Catalysis (ICMC) strategy. This approach constructs a cyclic catalytic cascade in which the MXene surface catalyzes monomer polymerization, while the sulfonate groups on the monomer reciprocally enhance the catalytic activity of MXene, resulting in a self-accelerating polymerization process. This method enables sub-minute gelation at low temperatures, yielding self-growing hydrogel coatings with tunable thickness (20–430 µm) and intrinsic multi-functionalities, including ultra-low friction (µ < 0.03), strong antibacterial activity (>99.2%), photothermal effect, and excellent biocompatibility. As a proof of concept, MXene-hydrogel coated surgical sutures reduce surface friction by 83% relative to commercial sutures and significantly mitigate inflammation and epithelial hyperplasia in a rat wound model. Notably, the ICMC approach is compatible with roll-to-roll (R2R) processing, enabling continuous and programmable fabrication of multifunctional hydrogel coatings. This work opens a door for easy and scalable manufacture of hydrogels-based functional biomaterials and medical devices.