On‐Skin Paintable Water‐Resistant Biohydrogel for Wearable Bioelectronics

Abstract

AbstractTo achieve accurate monitoring of bioelectrical signals, it is essential to use customizable bioelectrodes that can self‐adapt to the skin's surface topography. Ion‐conducting hydrogel has received significant attention in this field due to its softness, adhesion, and skin‐like mechanical properties. However, these bioelectrodes currently suffer from degradation of adhesion, electrical conductivity, and skin‐compliance when exposed to aqueous environments. This significantly limits the application of bioelectrodes. Herein, a customizable biohydrogel that can be applied on skin or fabric by solvent volatilization for liquid ink‐gel film conversion is reported. The biohydrogel's distinct characteristic of transitioning between a liquid and hydrogel phase establishes superb conformal contact and dynamic compliance with the epidermis. This effectively eliminates motion artifacts and results in lower contact impedance and noise in both static and dynamic states when compared to existing bioelectrodes. The biohydrogel is applied to the cotton fabric to create electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring garments. These garments enable the acquisition of ECG signals with high accuracy in aqueous environment for over 72 h. Besides, the biohydrogel‐based garments outperform the commercial gel electrodes by 83.5% in signal‐to‐noise ratio. Additionally, the cotton/biohydrogel electrode facilitates multi‐channel, high‐fidelity recording of ECG signals, enabling high‐performance capture and classification of ECG waveforms across multiple channels.