Abstract
Self-healing hydrogels that mimic human skin and have numerous senses of external tension and temperature are a current topic in science. However, getting skin-compatible performance out of them is still a challenge, which limits their use as skin-like devices. In the current work, various concentrations of hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC) and iron (III) were used to adjust the mechanical strength, self-healing, and electrically conductive efficiency of the hydrogel sensor at room temperature. The designed hydrogel exhibited robust mechanical strength with a fracture stress of 0.51 MPa, a fracturing strain of 1250%. The hydrogel also showed self-healing efficiency in stress (97%), strain (99%), and toughness (94%) in a 24 h healing time at room temperature without any external intervention. The hydrogel showed about 2.22 × 10–1 S m−1 electrical conductivity at room temperature. In the holding-loading stepwise test, the hydrogel displayed stair-like trends and maintained a specific strain for a long time without any change in the ΔR/R0 %, indicating outstanding resistance stability as a function of distinct stains.
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This work was supported by the Nanjing Forestry University “Metasequoia talent research start-up fund (Project No.163101071).
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Hussain, I., Ma, X., Wu, L. et al. Hydroxyethyl cellulose-based electrically conductive, mechanically resistant, strain-sensitive self-healing hydrogels. Cellulose 29, 5725–5743 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04622-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04622-6