3D Printed Ultrastretchable, Hyper-Antifreezing Conductive Hydrogel for Sensitive Motion and Electrophysiological Signal Monitoring

Abstract

Conductive hydrogels with high stretchability can extend their applications as a flexible electrode in electronics, biomedicine, human-machine interfaces, and sensors. However, their time-consuming fabrication and narrow ranges of working temperature and working voltage severely limit their further potential applications. Herein, a conductive nanocomposite network hydrogel fabricated by projection microstereolithography (PμSL) based 3D printing is proposed, enabling fast fabrication ability with high precision. The 3D printed hydrogels exhibit ultra-stretchability (2500%), hyper-antifreezing (-125°C), extremely low working voltage (<100 μV), and super cyclic tensile stability (1 million cycles). The hydrogel-based strain sensor can probe both large-scale and tiny human motions, even with ultralow voltage of 100 μV at extremely low temperature around −115°C. It is demonstrated that the present hydrogels can be used as a flexible electrode for capturing human electrophysiological signals (EOG and EEG), where the alpha and beta waves from the brain can be recorded precisely. Therefore, the present hydrogels will pave the way for the development of next-generation intelligent electronics, especially for those working under extremely low-temperature environments.