Establishing a Corrugated Carbon Network with a Crack Structure in a Hydrogel for Improving Sensing Performance

Electronic conductive hydrogels have prompted immense research interest as flexible sensing materials. However, establishing a continuous electronic conductive network within a hydrogel is still highly challenging. Herein, we develop a new strategy to establish a continuous corrugated carbon network within a hydrogel by embedding carbonized crepe paper into the hydrogel with its corrugations perpendicular to the stretching direction using a casting technique. The corrugated carbon network within the as-prepared composite hydrogel serves as a rigid conductive network to simultaneously improve the tensile strength and conductivity of the composite hydrogel. The composite hydrogel also generates a crack structure when it is stretched, enabling the composite hydrogel to show ultrahigh sensitivity (gauge factor = 59.7 and 114 at strain ranges of 0-60 and 60-100%, respectively). The composite hydrogel also shows an ultralow detection limit of 0.1%, an ultrafast response/recovery time of 75/95 ms, and good stability and durability (5000 cycles at 10% strain) when used as a resistive strain sensing material. Moreover, the good stretchability, adhesiveness, and self-healing ability of the hydrogel were also effectively retained after the corrugated carbon network was introduced into the hydrogel. Because of its outstanding sensing performance, the composite hydrogel has potential applications in sensing various human activities, including accurately recording subtle variations in wrist pulse waves and small-/large-scale complex human activities. Our work provides a new approach to develop economical, environmentally friendly, and reliable electronic conductive hydrogels with ultrahigh sensing performance for the future development of electronic skin and wearable devices.