Notch-insensitive, tough and self-healing conductive bacterial cellulose nanocomposite hydrogel for flexible wearable strain sensor

To date, conductive hydrogels as an alternative to traditional rigid metallic conductors have attracted much attention in the field of flexible wearable electronic devices due to their inherent characteristics. Herein, a conductive bacterial cellulose (BC) nanocomposite hydrophobic-association (HA) hydrogel with highly stretchable, strong, self-healing, and notch-insensitive was fabricated by introducing the hydrophobic association. The obtained BCNC HA hydrogel shows excellent mechanical properties (∼ 2400 % of stress and ∼ 0.35 MPa of mechanical strength), superior notch-insensitive property with a fracture energy of ∼38 KJ.m−2, and good self-healing property (healing efficiency of ∼97 %). In addition, the hydrogel exhibits excellent ionic conductivity of ∼1.90 S.m−1 and high sensing sensitivity toward tensile deformation. The wearable strain sensor based on this material is assembled can detect both large-scale motions and subtle body motions in real time, which show excellent durability (1000 cycles with the strain of 30 %). Thus, the BCNC HA hydrogels have promising potential in various wearable flexible electronic devices for artificial intelligence and human-machine interface applications in the future.