Abstract
Healable, flexible, near infrared sensitive and strain-sensitive for wearable device and healthcare monitoring are successfully formed from sensitive, conductive and biocompatible hydrogels. In this work, a sensitive, mechanically self-healing hydrogel was fabricated via the incorporation of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) into the hydrophobically associated polyacrylamide hydrogels. As a result, the optimal tensile strength (0.91 MPa) and electrical conductivity (0.5 S m−1) were achieved for the PAM/MWCNTs composite hydrogels. Due to its various functions, the cross-linking hydrogel could be made as a strain sensor. The strain sensor achieved a gauge factor of 5.6, and its response time was 0.3 s. It could be stretched at least for 200 cycles, which was further applied to monitor human movement, including movement of the hands, elbow and even swallowing. With excellent mechanical properties, tensile sensitivity and biocompatibility, the prepared hydrogels could be used as a perfect material for electronic skin. At the same time, flexible and healable PAM/MWCNTs hydrogel had a sensitive near-infrared light response, and we create a new flexible and healable near-infrared light-sensitive photosensor because of the incorporation of MWCNTs, which is different from the traditional NIR photosensor. It could be used in NIR detector, medical instrument and health equipment.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Hammock ML, Chortos A, Tee BC, Tok JB, Bao Z (2013) 25th anniversary article: the evolution of electronic skin (e-skin): a brief history, design considerations, and recent progress. Adv Mater 25(42):5997–6038
Lu B, Ying C, Ou D, Hang C, Diao L, Wei Z, Zheng J, Ma W, Sun L, Xue F (2015) Ultra-flexible piezoelectric devices integrated with heart to harvest the biomechanical energy. Sci Rep 5:16065
Cui W, Ji J, Cai FY, Li H, Rong R (2015) Robust, anti-fatigue, and self-healing graphene oxide/hydrophobic association composite hydrogels and their use as recyclable adsorbents for dye wastewater treatment. J Mater Chem A 3(33):17445–17458
Yang CH, Chen B, Lu JJ, Yang JH, Zhou J, Chen YM, Suo Z (2015) Ionic cable. Extreme Mech Lett 2015(3):59–65
Georgakilas V, Perman JA, Tucek J, Zboril R (2015) Broad family of carbon nanoallotropes: classification, chemistry, and applications of fullerenes, carbon dots, nanotubes, graphene, nanodiamonds, and combined superstructures. Chem Rev 115(11):4744–4822
Vaisman L, Wagner HD, Marom G (2006) The role of surfactants in dispersion of carbon nanotubes. Adv Colloid Interface Sci 128(128–130):37–46
Kim JY (2009) Carbon nanotube-reinforced thermotropic liquid crystal polymer nanocomposites. Materials 2(4):1955–1974
Miao J, Zhang F, Lin Y, Wang W, Gao M, Li L, Zhang J, Zhan X (2016) Highly sensitive organic photodetectors with tunable spectral response under bi-directional bias. Adv Opt Mater 4(11):1711–1717
Kielar M, Dhez O, Pecastaings G, Curutchet A, Hirsch L (2016) Long-term stable organic photodetectors with ultra low dark currents for high detectivity applications. Sci Rep 6:39201
Qi J, Qiao W, Wang ZY (2016) Advances in organic near-infrared materials and emerging applications. Chem Rec 16(3):1531–1548
Rogalski A (2002) Infrared detectors: an overview. Infrared Phys Technol 43(3):187–210
Jain PK, Huang X, Elsayed IH, Elsayed MA (2010) Noble metals on the nanoscale: optical and photothermal properties and some applications in imaging, sensing, biology, and medicine. ChemInform 40(14):1578–1586
Yi X, Wang F, Qin W, Yang X, Yuan J (2014) Near-infrared fluorescent probes in cancer imaging and therapy: an emerging field. Int J Nanomed 1:1347–1365
Guo B, Glavas L, Albertsson AC (2013) Biodegradable and electrically conducting polymers for biomedical applications. Prog Polym Sci 38(9):1263–1286
Wang Z, Zhou H, Chen W, Li Q, Yan B, Jin X, Ma A, Liu H, Zhao W (2018) Dually synergetic network hydrogels with integrated mechanical stretchability, thermal responsiveness and electrical conductivity for strain sensors and temperature alertors. ACS Appl Mater Interface 10(16):14045–14054
Zhao X, Li P, Guo B, Ma PX (2015) Antibacterial and conductive injectable hydrogels based on quaternized chitosan-graft-polyaniline/oxidized dextran for tissue engineering. Acta Biomater 26:236–248
Wang L, Wu Y, Guo B, Ma PX (2015) Nanofiber yarn/hydrogel core-shell scaffolds mimicking native skeletal muscle tissue for guiding 3D myoblast alignment, elongation, and differentiation. ACS Nano 9(9):9167
Wu Y, Wang L, Guo B, Ma PX (2017) Interwoven aligned conductive nanofiber yarn/hydrogel composite scaffolds for engineered 3D cardiac anisotropy. ACS Nano 2017:5646–5659
Ghavaminejad A, Hashmi S, Stadler FJ (2016) Effect of H2O and reduced graphene oxide on the structure and rheology of self-healing, stimuli responsive catecholic gels. Rheol Acta 55(2):1–14
Zhao X, Wu H, Guo B, Dong R, Qiu Y, Ma PX (2017) Antibacterial anti-oxidant electroactive injectable hydrogel as self-healing wound dressing with hemostasis and adhesiveness for cutaneous wound healing. Biomaterials 122:34–47
Gong X, Tong M, Xia Y, Cai W, Ji SM, Cao Y, Yu G, Shieh CL, Nilsson B, Heeger AJ (2009) High-detectivity polymer photodetectors with spectral response from 300 nm to 1450 nm. Science 325(5948):1665–1667
Xia S, Song S, Gao G (2018) Robust and flexible strain sensors based on dual physically cross-linked double network hydrogels for monitoring human-motion. Chem Eng J 354:817–824
Wang Z, Zhou H, Lai J (2018) Extremely stretchable and electrically conductive hydrogels with dually synergistic networks for wearable strain sensors. J Mater Chem C 6(34):9200–9207
Lai J, Zhou H, Wang M, Chen Y, Jin Z, Li S, Yang J, Jin X, Liu H, Zhao W (2018) Recyclable, stretchable and conductive double network hydrogels towards flexible strain sensors. J Mater Chem C 6(48):13316–13324
Liu YJ, Cao WT, Ma MG (2017) Ultrasensitive wearable soft strain sensors of conductive, self-healing, and elastic hydrogels with synergistic “soft and hard” hybrid networks. ACS Appl Mater Interfaces 9(30):25559–25570
Liu S, Li L (2017) Ultrastretchable and self-healing double-network hydrogel for 3D printing and strain sensor. ACS Appl Mater Interfaces 9(31):26429–26437
Mredha MTI, Guo YZ, Nonoyama T, Nakajima T, Kurokawa T, Gong JP (2018) A facile method to fabricate anisotropic hydrogels with perfectly aligned hierarchical fibrous structures. Adv Mater 30(9):1704937
Yan C, Wang J, Lee PS (2015) Stretchable graphene thermistor with tunable thermal index. ACS Nano 9(2):2130
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos 51773124, 51403132), Sichuan Science and Technology Program China (Grant Nos 2016GZ0300, 2018GZ0322), Innovation Team Program of Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province (Grant No 2014TD0002), Cooperation strategic Projects of Luzhou governments and Sichuan University (Grant No 2015CDLZ-G13) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No 2012017yjsy184).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest to declare.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
An, R., Zhang, B., Han, L. et al. Strain-sensitivity conductive MWCNTs composite hydrogel for wearable device and near-infrared photosensor. J Mater Sci 54, 8515–8530 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-019-03438-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-019-03438-3