A skin-inspired biomimetic strategy to fabricate cellulose enhanced antibacterial hydrogels as strain sensors.

With the development of wearable devices, the fabrication of strong, tough, antibacterial, and conductive hydrogels for sensor applications is necessary but remains challenging. Here, a skin-inspired biomimetic strategy integrated with in-situ reduction has been proposed. The self-assembly of cellulose to generate a cellulose skeleton was essential to realize the biomimetic structural design. Furthermore, in-situ generation of silver nanoparticles on the skeleton was easily achieved by a heating process. This process not only offered the excellent antibacterial property to hydrogels, but also improved the mechanical properties of hydrogels due to the elimination of negative effect of silver nanoparticles aggregation. The highest tensile strength and toughness could reach 2.0 MPa and 11.95 MJ/m, respectively. Moreover, a high detection range (up to 1300%) and sensitivity (gauge factor = 4.4) was observed as the strain sensors. This study provides a new horizon to fabricate strong, tough and functional hydrogels for various applications in the future.