Plant Template-Based Ultra-high Conductivity Multifunctional Silver Nanocomposite Transparent Hydrogel for Flexible Wearable Sensors

作者：Jiahui Li, Zhongmei Xia, Bin Tian, Longlong Tian, Tianyi Zhang, Chengxu Wang, Hao Wu, Jian Ni, Fuhua Hou, Yanlai Wang, Tiantian Li · 发表于：ACS Applied Polymer Materials · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1021/acsapm.4c03105 · 被引用次数：10 · 研究领域：Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials、Conducting polymers and applications、Nanomaterials and Printing Technologies

Conductive hydrogels, widely recognized as flexible sensor materials for health monitoring, pose a research challenge in selecting suitable frameworks and designing multifunctional composites that balance conductivity, transparency, self-healing, and mechanical properties. In this work, a simple and efficient plant-template method (corn husk) is used to generate a multifunctional textured hydrogel (PPA) with PEI and PVA as the transparent framework, without additional cross-linking agents. The resulting hydrogel exhibits high conductivity (8.56 S/m), excellent transparency (94% @ 550 nm for the nontextured variant), and remarkable stretchability (627.1%). Additionally, the PPA hydrogel exhibits remarkable self-healing capabilities, achieving a maximum self-healing efficiency of 94.68%. To enhance conductivity, AgNWs are applied to the PPA surface using a rod coating method, forming PPA@RCA with a conductivity of 12.39 S/m. This improvement is attributed to the interactions between the silver-based nanomaterials (AgNWs, AgNPs), Li +, and the PEI/PVA framework in PPA@RCA. The flexible wearable strain sensor based on PPA@RCA features a high gauge factor of 3.35 and instantaneous response characteristics (response time of 195 ms), exhibiting exceptional sensitivity and repeatability across diverse strain ranges and external stimuli. Therefore, the ultrahigh-conductive textured hydrogel, produced through a plant-template strategy, demonstrates significant potential for application...