Improving the Mechanical Properties and Printability of Matrigel–Fibrinogen–Thrombin: Fabrication of a New Composite Hydrogel

Matrigel and fibrinogen both fall into the category of natural hydrogel, exhibiting broad application prospects in research areas such as vascular repair and tumor model construction. However, the Matrigel–fibrinogen–thrombin (MFT) hydrogel generated by temperature and thrombin cross-linking has some limitations in mechanical strength and extrusion fluency. In light of this, this study intends to create a novel alginate–gelatin–Matrigel–fibrinogen (AGMF) hydrogel by using alginate–gelatin hydrogel to address the aforementioned challenges. The experimental results showed that alginate–gelatin plays a dominant role in AGMF and exhibits shear-thinning behavior. This behavior changes the extrusion fluency of MFT, and thus can successfully print different 3D structures. AGMF has a higher storage modulus (521.57 Pa) than MFT hydrogel (35.6 Pa), and the storage modulus decreases sharply above 23 °C. The mechanical properties of AGMF crosslinked with CaCl2 for 1 min can be significantly improved, and the strain rate change is only 36.13% of that of MFT at 70 g load. Consequently, this work is a valuable reference for optimizing the mechanical and printing properties of MFT hydrogel.