Innenrücktitelbild: Transient and Dissipative Host–Guest Hydrogels Regulated by Consumption of a Reactive Chemical Fuel (Angew. Chem. 11/2023)

A new route to prepare hydrogels relies on consumption of a chemical fuel to transiently drive network crosslinking by host–guest motifs, thereby prompting hydrogelation. The temporary nature of this fuel-directed change in the interacting molecules causes the gels that are formed from this fuel to have a limited lifetime, autonomously converting back to their original pre-gel state over time without additional user input. Details of the study are reported by Matthew J. Webber et al. in their Research Article (e202216537).