Conductive hydrogels have emerged as promising material candidates for epidermal sensors due to their similarity to biological tissues, good wearability, and high accuracy of information acquisition. However, it is difficult to simultaneously achieve conductive hydrogel-based epidermal sensors with reliable healability for long-term usage, robust mechanical property, environmental degradability for decreased electronic waste, and sensing capability of the physiological stimuli and the electrophysiological signals. Herein, we propose the synthesis strategy of a multifunctional epidermal sensor based on the highly stretchable, self-healing, degradable, and biocompatible nanocomposite hydrogel, which is fabricated from the conformal coating of a MXene (Ti3C2T x ) network by the hydrogel polymer networks involving poly(acrylic acid) and amorphous calcium carbonate. The epidermal sensor can be employed to sensitively detect human motions with the fast response time (20 ms) and to serve as electronic skins for wirelessly monitoring the electrophysiological signals (such as the electromyogram and electrocardiogram signals). Meanwhile, the multifunctional epidermal sensor could be degraded in phosphate buffered saline solution, which could not cause any pollution to the environment. This line of research work sheds light on the fabrication of the healable, degradable, and electrophysiological signal-sensitive conductive hydrogel-based epidermal sensors with potential applications in human–machine interactions, healthy diagnosis, and smart robot prosthesis devices.
Abstract2D transition‐metal carbides and nitrides, named MXenes, are promising materials for energy storage, but suffer from aggregation and restacking of the 2D nanosheets, which limits their electrochemical performance. In order to overcome this problem and realize the full potential of MXene nanosheets, a 3D MXene foam with developed porous structure is established via a simple sulfur‐template method, which is freestanding, flexible, and highly conductive, and can be directly used as the electrode in lithium‐ion batteries. The 3D porous architecture of the MXene foam offers massive active sites to enhance the lithium storage capacity. Moreover, its foam structure facilitates electrolyte infiltration for fast Li+ transfer. As a result, this flexible 3D porous MXene foam exhibits significantly enhanced capacity of 455.5 mAh g−1 at 50 mA g−1, excellent rate performance (101 mAh g−1 at 18 A g−1), and superior ultralong‐term cycle stability (220 mAh g−1 at 1 A g−1 after 3500 cycles). This work not only demonstrates the great superiority of the 3D porous MXene foam but also proposes the sulfur‐template method for controllable constructing of the 3D foam from 2D nanosheets at a relatively low temperature.
Flexible, breathable, and degradable pressure sensors with excellent sensing performance are drawing tremendous attention for various practical applications in wearable artificial skins, healthcare monitoring, and artificial intelligence due to their flexibility, breathability, lightweight, decreased electronic rubbish, and environmentally friendly impact. However, traditional plastic or elastomer substrates with impermeability, uncomfortableness, mechanical mismatches, and nondegradability greatly restricted their practical applications. Therefore, the fabrication of such pressure sensors with high flexibility, facile degradability, and breathability is still a critical challenge and highly desired. Herein, we present a wearable, breathable, degradable, and highly sensitive MXene/protein nanocomposites-based pressure sensor. The fabricated MXene/protein-based pressure sensor is assembled from a breathable conductive MXene coated silk fibroin nanofiber (MXene-SF) membrane and a silk fibroin nanofiber membrane patterned with a MXene ink-printed (MXene ink-SF) interdigitated electrode, which can serve as the sensing layer and the electrode layer, respectively. The assembled pressure sensor exhibits a wide sensing range (up to 39.3 kPa), high sensitivity (298.4 kPa–1 for 1.4–15.7 kPa; 171.9 kPa–1 for 15.7–39.3 kPa), fast response/recovery time (7/16 ms), reliable breathability, excellent cycling stability over 10 000 cycles, good biocompatibility, and robust degradability. Furthermore, it shows great sensing performance in monitoring human psychological signals, acting as an artificial skin for the quantitative illustration of pressure distribution, and wireless biomonitoring in real time. Considering the biodegradable and breathable features, the sensor may become promising to find potential applications in smart electronic skins, human motion detection, disease diagnosis, and human–machine interaction.
Metrics & MoreArticle Recommendations * sı Supporting Information T he unit of the scale bar for Figure 1b should be labeled "nm" not "μm". In the Supporting Information, the images of the allergy skin test in Figure S25 were incorrectly labeled with time. None of the experimental results, discussions, or conclusions of the main text is changed. The original captions and discussions on Figure S25 remain unaltered. The authors apologize for any inconvenience and misunderstanding caused.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.