Achieving Antimicrobial Activity of Highly Stretchable Hydrogel Upon DBD Plasma Treatment

Recently, we developed a highly stretchable and moldable solid hydrogel based on polyacrylamide (PAAm) and gelatin. The hydrogel may serve as a material for wound healing and/or wound treatment due to its stretchability and low young’s module. For wound healing or wound treatment applications, the hydrogel should be antimicrobial. We demonstrate in this work that upon a treatment using dielectric barrier discharge plasma (DBD), the hydrogel possesses the required antimicrobial efficacy.