A moisture self-regenerative, ultra-low temperature anti-freezing and self-adhesive polyvinyl alcohol/polyacrylamide/CaCl2/MXene ionotronics hydrogel for bionic skin strain sensor

Abstract

Ignited by the concept of bionics, hydrogel-based bionic skin sensors have received more and more attention and been widely used in health monitoring, robots, implantable prostheses and human-machine interfaces. However, there still remain some challenges to be urgently solved for hydrogel-based bionic skin sensors, such as the water evaporation and the defects of single conductive mechanism of electronic skin or ionic skin. Herein, we prepared a polyvinyl alcohol/polyacrylamide/CaCl2/MXene (PPCM) ionotronics hydrogel with moisture self-regenerative, highly sensitive, ultra-low temperature anti-freezing (−50 °C) and self-adhesive features and applied it as bionic skin strain sensor. The introduction of MXene and CaCl2 endows the PPCM hydrogel with both electron and ion conductive channels, which effectively compensates for the defects of single electronic skin or ionic skin. Importantly, the addition of CaCl2 into the PPCM hydrogel offers it the moisture self-regenerative ability, holding the long-term water retention. The water in the PPCM hydrogel can still be kept in a stable state after continuous use for 70 days at room temperature, thus ensuring the long-term stability of the hydrogel-based sensor. Such a moisture self-regenerative ability should be an important feature for intelligentizing the hydrogel-based bionic skin for practical applications.