Natural polymers-enhanced double-network hydrogel as wearable flexible sensor with high mechanical strength and strain sensitivity

Conductive hydrogels have shown great prospects as wearable flexible sensors.Nevertheless,it is still a challenge to construct hydrogel-based sensor with great mechanical strength and high strain sensitivity.Herein,an ion-conducting hydrogel was fabricated by introducing gelatin-dialdehydeβ-cyclodextrin(Gel-DACD)into polyvinyl alcohol-borax(PVA-borax)hydrogel network.Natural Gel-DACD network acted as mechanical deformation force through non-covalent cross-linking to endow the polyvinyl alcoholborax/gelatin-dialdehydeβ-cyclodextrin hydrogel(PGBCDH)with excellent mechanical stress(1.35 MPa),stretchability(400%),toughness(1.84 MJ/m3)and great fatigue resistance(200%strain for 100 cycles).Surprisingly,PGBCDH displayed good conductivity of 0.31 S/m after adding DACD to hydrogel network.As sensor,it showed rapid response(168 ms),high strain sensitivity(gage factor(GF)=8.57 in the strain range of 200%-250%)and reliable sensing stability(100%strain for 200 cycles).Importantly,PGBCDHbased sensor can accurately monitor complex body movements(knee,elbow,wrist and finger joints)and large-scale subtle movements(speech,swallow,breath and facial expressions).Thus,PGBCDH shows great potential for human monitoring with high precision.