Dynamically reconfigurable conductive hydrogels based on the spatial confinement and backbone reinforcement of...

Traditional hydrogels struggle to balance mechanical toughness and signal stability due to their reliance on permanent chemical crosslinking or sacrificial bond energy dissipation. To address this issue, this work introduces a fully physically cross-linked, dynamically reconfigurable hyperelastic bacterial cellulose/tannic acid-MXene/polyacrylamide (BC/TA-MXene/PAM) dual-network conductive hydrogel. The hydrogel uses BC as a continuous skeleton, TA-MXene as a conductive filler, PAM as a flexible network, and a sodium dodecyl sulfonate/octadecyl methacrylate (SDS/C₁₈M) hydrophobic complex as a dynamic physical cross-linking node, thereby constructing of multiple internal networks within the hydrogel. This multi-component synergy (hydrophobic association, reversible dissociation/recombination, hydrogen bonding, and π-π/electrostatic interactions) enables the hydrogel networks to achieve efficient energy dissipation and rapid structural recovery during deformation. Meanwhile, the BC skeleton provides mechanical support and spatial confinement for the hydrogel, ensuring interface stability and a conductive pathway. The results showed that the BC/TA-MXene/PAM hydrogel has excellent tensile properties (elongation at break of about 1300%) and toughness (2.25 MJ/m³), notch-insensitive behavior (fracture energy 15.54 kJ/m²), and high sensitivity (GF = 12.25). Additionally, the hydrogel offers stable and repeatable electrical responses for motion recognition, human-computer interaction, and signal transmission. This work provides a scalable physical-crosslinking strategy to engineer reliable, dynamically reconfigurable conductive hydrogels for wearable electronics materials.