AI Article Synopsis

  • Conductive hydrogels traditionally have low electrical conductivity due to their high water content, which hampers carrier transport between conductive fillers.
  • This study introduces a highly conductive and stretchable hydrogel nanocomposite using whiskered gold nanosheets that maintain a strong connection even when stretched, resulting in impressive conductivity levels (≈520 S/cm) and stretchability (≈300%) without needing dehydration.
  • The new gold-adhesive hydrogel nanocomposite demonstrates superior performance in bioelectronics applications, such as epicardial electrogram recording and nerve stimulation, outperforming existing elastomer-based electrodes.

Article Abstract

The low electrical conductivity of conductive hydrogels limits their applications as soft conductors in bioelectronics. This low conductivity originates from the high water content of hydrogels, which impedes facile carrier transport between conductive fillers. This study presents a highly conductive and stretchable hydrogel nanocomposite comprising whiskered gold nanosheets. A dry network of whiskered gold nanosheets is fabricated and then incorporated into the wet hydrogel matrices. The whiskered gold nanosheets preserve their tight interconnection in hydrogels despite the high water content, providing a high-quality percolation network even under stretched states. Regardless of the type of hydrogel matrix, the gold-hydrogel nanocomposites exhibit a conductivity of ≈520 S cm and a stretchability of ≈300% without requiring a dehydration process. The conductivity reaches a maximum of ≈3304 S cm when the density of the dry gold network is controlled. A gold-adhesive hydrogel nanocomposite, which can achieve conformal adhesion to moving organ surfaces, is fabricated for bioelectronics demonstrations. The adhesive hydrogel electrode outperforms elastomer-based electrodes in in vivo epicardial electrogram recording, epicardial pacing, and sciatic nerve stimulation.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adma.202407931DOI Listing

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