A novel bifunctional transparent non-covalent crosslinked hydrogel for wearable sensors and ion detection

Abstract

Currently, it is insufficient to solely detect physical signals for the flexible sensor as a wearable electronic. Conductive hydrogels can serve as the ideal candidate for designing a novel wearable sensor with multiple functionalities, which benefits from the nature of flexibility, biocompatibility, and modulated function. However, they are usually fabricated by the chemical crosslinking polymer network, leading to a low chain fluidity and brittleness resulting from the poor energy dissipation. Additionally, the time-consuming preparation process and use of toxic initiators also pose a significant challenge to them for practical application. Herein, we prepared a novel noncovalent crosslinked hydrogel-based sensor with the deep eutectic solvents (DES)-catalyzed initiator and crosslinker-free method triggered by sunlight, the resulting interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) hydrogel dopped with zinc oxide quantum dots (ZnO QDs) exhibited favorable transparency, mechanical performance, and reliable adhesion, which can be utilized to monitor daily physiological motion in real time and detect abnormal ions due to certain diseases, providing a new insight for the revolution of development principle versatile wearable electronic fields.