【Mater Horiz】3D Printed Microstructured Ultra-Sensitive Pressure Sensors Based on Microgel-Reinforced Double Network Hydrogels for Biomechanical Applications
作者：Jingxia Zheng, Guoqi Chen, and Jun Fu* et al.
關鍵字：microgel, 3D printing, pressure sensor
論文來源：期刊
具體來源：Materials Horizons
發表時間：2023年
Hydrogel-based wearable flexible pressure sensors have great promise in human health and motion monitoring. However, it remains a great challenge to significantly improve the toughness, sensitivity and stability of hydrogel sensors. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication of hierarchically structured hydrogel sensors by 3D printing microgel-reinforced double network (MRDN) hydrogels to achieve both very high sensitivity and mechanical toughness. Polyelectrolyte microgels are used as building blocks, which are interpenetrated with a second network, to construct super tough hydrogels. The obtained hydrogels show tensile strength of 1.61 MPa, and fracture toughness of 5.08 MJ/m3 with high water content. The MRDN hydrogel precursors exhibit reversible gel-sol transitions, which serve as ideal inks for 3D printing microstructured sensor arrays with high fidelity and precision. The microstructured hydrogel sensors show an ultra-high sensitivity of 0.925 kPa-1, more than 50 times that of plain hydrogel sensors. The hydrogel sensors are assembled as an array onto a shoe-pad to monitor foot biomechanics during gaiting. Moreover, a sensor array with a well-arranged spatial distribution of sensor pixels with different microstructures and sensitivities is fabricated to track the trajectory of a crawling tortoise. Such hydrogel sensors have promising applications for flexible wearable electronic devices.