Fully Polymeric Conductive Hydrogels with Low Hysteresis and High Toughness as Multi-Responsive and Self-Powered Wearable Sensors

High mechanical strength, excellent toughness, low hysteresis, and robust resilience are of great importance for stretchable conductive hydrogels (CHs) to heighten their reliabilities for self-powered sensing applications. However, it still remains challenging to simultaneously obtain the mutually exclusive performances. Herein, an intrinsically conductive and adhesive hydrogel is fabricated by one-step radical polymerization of acrylamide (AAm), three hydroxy groups together clustered-N-[tris(hydroxymethyl)methyl]acrylamide (THMA), and cationic 1-Butyl-3-Vinylimidazolium Bromide (ILs) dissolved in core-shell structurally dispersed PEDOT:PSS (PP) solution. Owing to abundant clustered hydrogen bonds, electrostatic interactions between PILs chains and anionic PSS shells, and polymer chain entanglements, the CHs feature superior mechanical properties with a high tensile strength (0.25 MPa), fracture strain (1015%), fracture toughness (1.22 MJ m-3), fracture energy of 36.5 kJ m-2 and extremely low hysteresis (5%), and display excellent resilience and fatigue resistance. As a result, the CHs indicate excellent sensing properties with a gauge factor up to 10.46, a broad sensing range of strain (1-900%) and pressure (0.05-100 kPa), and fast responsive rate, thus qualifying for monitoring reliably and accurately large and tiny human movements in daily life. Moreover, the hydrogel-assembled triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) exhibit excellent and stable electrical output performances, which are greatly promising in self-powered flexible wearable electronics. A fully polymeric conductive hydrogel with high toughness, low hysteresis, and robust resilience is fabricated by the abundant clustered hydrogen bonds between poly-N-[tris(hydroxymethyl)methyl]acrylamide (PTHMA) chains, electrostatic interactions between poly(1-Butyl-3-Vinylimidazolium Bromide) (PILs) chains and PEDOT:PSS, and chain entanglements. The conductive hydrogels are further assembled into a multi-responsive and self-powered wearable sensor, which displays reliable and accurate sensing properties for human motion monitoring. image