Multifunctional structural color Chinese herb hydrogel patches for wound management

Chinese herb hydrogel has outstanding values in wound treatment. Tremendous effort is dedicated to developing functional and intelligent Chinese herb hydrogels for accelerating healing process. Herein, a novel multifunctional bilayer Chinese herb hydrogel patch for wound healing is presented. The patches are composed of a Ginsenoside compound K (GCK)-integrated chitosan inverse opal scaffold layer and a Bletilla striata polysaccharide (BP) hydrogel filler layer. As the photothermal conversion capacity of BP can trigger faster degradation of its hydrogel layer under near-infrared (NIR) light, the encapsulated BP can be controllably released to wound area and exhibit photothermal antibacterial and antioxidant effects. Besides, the inverse opal scaffold layer shows great mechanical property and moisturizing performance, and its released GCK can promote angiogenesis for long term therapeutic effects. Attractively, due to responsive structural color, the patch is endowed with self-reporting performance, which can real-time visually monitor the drug release degree. Taking advantages of these properties, the patches have been demonstrated to achieve satisfying therapeutic effects for in vivo wound treatment. Therefore, we believe that the proposed Chinese herb hydrogel patches are valuable as multifunctional patches for clinical treatment.