Robust, anti-freezing and conductive bonding of chitosan-based double-network hydrogels for stable-performance flexible electronic

Yanyu Yang; Manhua Zhou; Junbo Peng; Xing Wang; Yang Liu; Wanjie Wang; Decheng Wu

doi:10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118753

Robust, anti-freezing and conductive bonding of chitosan-based double-network hydrogels for stable-performance flexible electronic

Carbohydr Polym. 2022 Jan 15:276:118753. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118753. Epub 2021 Oct 22.

Authors

Yanyu Yang¹, Manhua Zhou², Junbo Peng², Xing Wang³, Yang Liu⁴, Wanjie Wang², Decheng Wu⁵

Affiliations

¹ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan 450001, China; Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
² College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan 450001, China.
³ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. Electronic address: wangxing@iccas.ac.cn.
⁴ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan 450001, China; Departments of Cerebrovascular Diseases, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan, China. Electronic address: liuy@zzu.edu.cn.
⁵ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; Department of Biomedical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, China. Electronic address: wudc@sustech.edu.cn.

PMID: 34823782
DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118753

Abstract

Unstable hydrogel-substrate interfaces and defunctionalization at low temperature severely restrict versatile applications of hydrogel-based systems. Herein, various chitosan-polyacrylamide double-network (CS-PAM DN) ionic hydrogels were chemically linked with diverse substrates to construct robust and anti-freezing hydrogel-substrate combination, wherein the destructible CS physical network rendered effective energy dissipation mechanism to significantly enhanced the cohesion of hydrogels and the covalent linkage between PAM network with substrate surface strongly improved the interfacial adhesion. The synergistic effects enabled the CS-PAM DN hydrogels to be tightly bonded on diverse metals and inorganics. Impressively, the hydrogel-substrate combinations were freezing tolerant to well-maintain high interfacial toughness at low temperature. Notably, due to the high toughness and conductivity of hydrogel-metal interface, the hydrogel-metal combination can be utilized as a multi-model flexible sensor to detect strain and pressure within broad temperature range. This work may provide a platform for construction and emerging application of robust, anti-freezing and stable-performance hydrogel-based systems.

Keywords: Chitosan; Flexible sensing; Freezing tolerance; Hydrogel; Interfacial toughness.