Conductive self-healing polymer hydrogel and related soft sensor devices are receiving considerable attention from academia to industry because of their impacts on the lifetime and ergonomic designs. However, the development of mechanically robust, self-healable and electrically conductive materials has far limited considered performances and accessibility to next-generation soft electronic systems.<br/>Herein, robustness, self-healing, and conductivity for soft electronic skin are realized by an interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) system based on chemical/ionic cross-linked polymer network, intercalated with physically cross-linked polymer network. This IPN hydrogel successfully satisfies all three aforementioned capabilities; elongation at break greater than 1400%; recovery to original mechanical properties greater than 80% after 24 h of self-healing; and 0.14 S m<sup>-1</sup> of ionic conductivity, which is also electrically healable. Such ionic conductivity of hydrogels enables multimodal sensing capabilities, i.e., for strain, pressure, and temperature. Particularly, a uniquely designed dual sensor simultaneously detects mechanical strain and pressure changes independently and can endure the repeated deformation of 1,000 times and heating up to 90 °C without the degradation.<br/>In summation, multimodal sensor systems based on mechanically robust, self-healable and electrically conductive hydrogels could provide insights into emerging industrial fields such as soft robotics, prosthesis and health monitoring systems. Moreover, the scope of materials and devices in this work may be extended to the different fields such as biomedical devices and energy storage devices.

Ion-conductive and self-healable hydrogels based on an interpenetrating polymer network for a multimodal sensor system

2019 Fall National Meeting

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