Chen Kai, Liu Mingxiang, Wang Feng, Hu Yunping, Liu Pei, Li Cong, Du Qianqian, Yu Yongsheng, Xiao Xiufeng, Feng Qian
Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials Oriented Chemical Engineering, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China.
School of Resources and Chemical Engineering, Sanming University, Sanming, China.
Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2022 Feb 7;10:846401. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.846401. eCollection 2022.
Hydrogel-based flexible electronic devices are essential in future healthcare and biomedical applications, such as human motion monitoring, advanced diagnostics, physiotherapy, etc. As a satisfactory flexible electronic material, the hydrogel should be conductive, ductile, self-healing, and adhesive. Herein, we demonstrated a unique design of mechanically resilient and conductive hydrogel with double network structure. The Ca crosslinked alginate as the first dense network and the ionic pair crosslinked polyzwitterion as the second loose network. With the synthetic effect of these two networks, this hydrogel showed excellent mechanical properties, such as superior stretchability (1,375%) and high toughness (0.57 MJ/m). At the same time, the abundant ionic groups of the polyzwitterion network endowed our hydrogel with excellent conductivity (0.25 S/m). Moreover, due to the dynamic property of these two networks, our hydrogel also performed good self-healing performance. Besides, our experimental results indicated that this hydrogel also had high optical transmittance (92.2%) and adhesive characteristics. Based on these outstanding properties, we further explored the utilization of this hydrogel as a flexible wearable strain sensor. The data strongly proved its enduring accuracy and sensitivity to detect human motions, including large joint flexion (such as finger, elbow, and knee), foot planter pressure measurement, and local muscle movement (such as eyebrow and mouth). Therefore, we believed that this hydrogel had great potential applications in wearable health monitoring, intelligent robot, human-machine interface, and other related fields.
基于水凝胶的柔性电子设备在未来医疗保健和生物医学应用中至关重要，如人体运动监测、先进诊断、物理治疗等。作为一种令人满意的柔性电子材料，水凝胶应具有导电性、延展性、自愈合性和粘性。在此，我们展示了一种具有双网络结构的机械弹性导电水凝胶的独特设计。以钙交联藻酸盐作为第一致密网络，离子对交联聚两性离子作为第二疏松网络。通过这两个网络的协同作用，这种水凝胶表现出优异的机械性能，如卓越的拉伸性（1375%）和高韧性（0.57 MJ/m³）。同时，聚两性离子网络丰富的离子基团赋予我们的水凝胶优异的导电性（0.25 S/m）。此外，由于这两个网络的动态特性，我们的水凝胶还表现出良好的自愈合性能。此外，我们的实验结果表明这种水凝胶还具有高透光率（92.2%）和粘附特性。基于这些优异性能，我们进一步探索了这种水凝胶作为柔性可穿戴应变传感器的应用。数据有力地证明了其在检测人体运动方面的持久准确性和灵敏度，包括大关节弯曲（如手指、肘部和膝盖）、足底压力测量以及局部肌肉运动（如眉毛和嘴巴）。因此，我们认为这种水凝胶在可穿戴健康监测、智能机器人、人机界面及其他相关领域具有巨大的潜在应用价值。
