Self-healing and wearable conductive hydrogels with dynamic physically crosslinked structure

Traditional hydrogels are easily frozen or evaporated under colder or hotter temperatures, resulting in their performance degradation. In this paper, polyacrylic acid, sodium alginate, carbon nanotubes, water, and glycerol are used to synthesize self-healing, wearable, freezing resistance, and dry resistance conductive hydrogels with interpenetrating crosslinking network structure. The dynamic cross-linking network structure of the hydrogel can rapidly recover and restructure after damage. In addition, the conductive hydrogels exhibit excellent adhesion to various materials (including PTFE, iron, glass, plastic, and skin). Conductive hydrogel has excellent strain-electric sensing properties, and has high sensitivity, significant stability and repeatability. The conductive hydrogel can be used to test the movement of fingers and knee joints by strain sensing, and has excellent, sensitive, and stable resistance response. Therefore, the conductive hydrogel can be used as a wearable strain sensor for real-time detection of human joint movement. The hydrogel has better environmental adaptability and broad application prospects.