Tough and conductive nanocomposite hydrogels for human motion monitoring

Abstract

Conductive hydrogels have received great attention owing to their promising applications in electrodes, supercapacitors, actuators, fuel cells, biosensors and biomedical devices and so on. However, it is still a challenge to achieve conductive hydrogels with integrated high performances, including high strength, large stretchability, high toughness, rapid self-recovery and good self-healing. In the present work, multiple physically cross-linked conductive hydrogels with integrated high performances were fabricated by in situ doping conductive PEDOT:PSS during the formation of dual physically cross-linked poly(N-hydroxyethyl acrylamide)/Laponite hydrogels. At the optimal condition, the conductive gels exhibit high tensile strength, high extensibility, high tearing energy, rapid self-recovery property without any external stimuli, high conductivity, good self-healing property, as well as sensitive strain sensing for monitoring human activities (e.g. the movements of the finger and wrist, and tiny breathing movements). Considering easy preparation and integrated high performances, our conductive gels have potential applications in wearable electronic sensors and bioelectronics.