Extremely stretchable and healable ionic conductive hydrogels fabricated by surface competitive coordination for human-motion detection

The construction of a surface-wrinkled ionic conductive hydrogel with highly stretchable and healable properties for a skin-inspired pressure sensor is desirable yet challenging. Here, a stretching/competitively-coordinating/releasing (SCR) strategy is presented for preparing a self-buckled polyacrylamide/alginate hydrogel (SPAH). Due to its high stretchability, excellent ionic conductivity and programmable wrinkled surfaces, the SPAH can readily work as an ionic conductor in a healable skin-inspired pressure sensor with adaptability and multi-functionality, achieving a wide pressure response range (25-20000 Pa), high sensitivity towards strain (3.19 kPa(-1)), low detection limit (<25 Pa) and excellent durability (>1400 cycles). As a proof-of-concept, a wearable SPAH pressure sensor can adequately monitor finger bending, knee flexion, speaking and breathing, showing high potentials in full-range and sophisticated motion monitoring across the applications involving human-machine interfaces, soft robotics, and artificial intelligence.

Automated summary

The SCR strategy was used to prepare a highly stretchable, excellent ionic conductivity and programmable wrinkled surface SPAH hydrogel for a skin-inspired pressure sensor. The SPAH demonstrated wide pressure response range, high sensitivity towards strain, low detection limit and excellent durability, showing great potential in applications involving human-machine interfaces, soft robotics, and artificial intelligence.