Skin-Inspired Gels with Toughness, Antifreezing, Conductivity, and Remoldability

In recent years, nature-inspired conductive hydrogels have become ideal materials for the design of bioactuators, healthcare monitoring sensors, and flexible wearable devices. However, conductive hydrogels are often hindered by problems such as the poor mechanical property, nonreusability, and narrow operating temperature range. Here, a novel skin-inspired gel is prepared via one step of blending polyvinyl alcohol, gelatin, and glycerin. Due to their dermis-mimicking structure, the obtained gels possess high mechanical properties (fracture stress of 1044 kPa, fracture strain of 715%, Young's modulus of 157 kPa, and toughness of 3605 kJ m(-3)). Especially, the gels exhibit outstanding strain-sensitive electric behavior as biosensors to monitor routine movement signals of the human body. Moreover, the gels with low temperature tolerance can maintain good conductivity and flexibility at -20 degrees C. Interestingly, the gels are capable of being recovered and reused by heating injection, cooling molding, and freezing-thawing cycles. Thus, as bionic materials, the gels have fascinating potential applications in various fields, such as human-machine interfaces, biosensors, and wearable devices.