Highly Stretchable and Ex-situ Self-healing Organohydrogel for Flexible Electric Sensors

Abstract

Hydrogels have emerged as a promising class of soft materials, particularly valued for their biocompatibility and high-water content. However, conventional hydrogels are fundamentally limited by their poor mechanical stretchability and lack of self-healing capabilities, severely restricting their practical applications. Herein, we report a simple yet effective strategy to significantly enhance both the stretchability and self-healing capability of PVA-based (PVA: polyvinyl alcohol) organohydrogels by introducing glucose as a dynamic multi-hydroxyl crosslinker. The abundant hydroxyl groups on glucose molecules form additional dynamic hydrogen bonds with the PVA matrix, resulting in a denser and more dynamic physically cross-linked network. The resulting glucose-PVA organohydrogel exhibits remarkable performance: ultrahigh stretchability (16300 strain, representing a 12-fold improvement over glucose-free systems), dynamic bond-mediated ex-situ self-healing, and injectability. Remarkably, the synergistic effect between glucose-mediated plasticization and the poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) conductive network enables simultaneous acquisition of both resistive strain signals and electrophysiological signals, demonstrating significant potential for applications in disease diagnosis and motion analysis. This work not only provides a high-performance soft material for potential applications in flexible electronics and biomedical devices but also offers a novel strategy for designing advanced multifunctional gels.

Keywords

Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) organohydrogel / Glucose plasticization / Ultra-stretchability / Ex-situ self-healing / Electric sensor

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Jilin University, The Editorial Department of Chemical Research in Chinese Universities and Springer-Verlag GmbH

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