Designing high performance hydrogel sensor for real-time sensing applications

Achieving high performance conductive hydrogel sensor which is capable of combining as many advantages as possible in one is highly desired to satisfy real-world tasks. To this end, novel hydrogel sensors PVA/NaDa (polyvinyl alcohol/D-Gluconic acid sodium salt) and PVA/NaLa (polyvinyl alcohol/L-Glutamic acid monosodium salt) have been successfully constructed via a facile and effective strategy. The hydrogels realize the combination of robust mechanical properties (stress, strain, elastic modulus, toughness, fatigue resistance, anti-breakage ability and recovery performance), excellent conductivity, sensitive sensitivity, rapid response capacity and high cytocompatibility. The increasing hydrogen bond cross-linking density and hydrogen bond interactions of NaDa (NaLa) with PVA are mainly responsible for significantly intensified mechanical properties of PVA/NaDa and PVA/NaLa hydrogels. Benefiting from the prominent performances, the hydrogels can be processed into flexible membrane sensors to not only effectively detect the human joint motions but also sensitively simulate manual control of the mobile phone screen for writing text, demonstrating a promising application in multifunctional intelligent robots, electronic skins, artificial intelligence and among others.