Spider-web inspired self-healing, adhesive, injectable conductive hydrogel for human motion monitoring and shape recognition

Abstract

Conductive hydrogels have received significant attention in fabricating wearable strain sensors, electronic skins, and human-machine interface applications, but suffer the poor cycling capacity and hard to be applied in complex sensing applications. Herein a spider web-inspired poly (stearyl methacrylate-co-acrylic acid) and polyvinyl alcohol interpenetrating network conductive hydrogel was synthesized via one-step in-situ polymerization to address these challenges aforementioned. The as-obtained hydrogels exhibit good mechanical strength (111 kPa stress), high stretchability (1029% strain), strong adhesiveness, high conductivity, injectability, and rapid self-healing performance (the healing efficiency of 87.3% at room temperature within 4 h). Attributing to excellent self-healing properties, the hydrogels were easily reprocessed four times at room temperature without losing their intrinsic characteristics. Additionally, high strain sensitivity (GF = 4.28 in the wide strain-sensing range 1–500%) and real time monitoring large/tiny human motions have been also realized. Most importantly, a assembled sensing array has been demonstrated via the injectable behaviour to detect the mass and contact shape of the target We believe that this study will definitely broaden the practical applications of a new generation of hydrogel-based wearable strain sensor.