67 / 2023-12-29 12:37:48

Multifunctional Sodium Alginate-based Conductive Hydrogels for Flexible Smart Sensors

hydrogel,sensor,various scenarios,Bionics-inspired

Conductive hydrogel-based wearables have attracted a lot of attention due to their wide range of applications. However, how integrating excellent adhesion, self-healing, environmental adaptability, and stimulus-response into polymer hydrogels remains a challenge. The multifunctional PBSD hydrogel has been prepared successfully, in which polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), sodium alginate (SA), and polydopamine (PDA) were used as matrix materials, borax as crosslinking agent, water and ethylene glycol as solvent. The PBSD hydrogel has excellent environmental adaptability, such as anti-freezing, anti-drying and long-term stability, which were verified by density functional theory (DFT) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, and are consistent with the experimental data. In addition, it also has strong adhesion property and fast self-healing performance. The flexible sensor assembled from PBSD hydrogel showed extremely high sensitivity (when the strain was 1550%, GF=28.71). The PBSD hydrogel sensors can be used to monitor large and tiny human movements, and can further be coupled to a wireless transmitter for wireless monitoring. Furthermore, the hydrogel sensor can be applied to handwriting recognition. This work promotes wearable comfort, improves sensitivity, and broadens the application range of wearable devices. It has good potential in various wearable electronic products for human-machine interface, human activity monitoring, and personal health diagnosis.