On‐Skin Paintable Water‐Resistant Biohydrogel for Wearable Bioelectronics

• Published in: Advanced functional materials 2024-08, Vol.34 (34), p.n/a
• Main Authors: Luo, Jiabei, Sun, Chuanyue, Chang, Boya, Zhang, Bin, Li, Kerui, Li, Yaogang, Zhang, Qinghong, Wang, Hongzhi, Hou, Chengyi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adhesion; Aqueous environments; Bioelectricity; biohydrogel; Cotton; Electric contacts; Electrical resistivity; Electrocardiography; Electrodes; Epidermis; Garments; Hydrogels; Mechanical properties; Noise monitoring; on‐skin bioelectrode; paintable bioelectrode; Signal classification; Skin resistance; Softness; water‐resistant; Waveforms; wearable electronics
• ISSN: 1616-301X; 1616-3028
• DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202400884

To achieve accurate monitoring of bioelectrical signals, it is essential to use customizable bioelectrodes that can self‐adapt to the skin's surface topography. Ion‐conducting hydrogel has received significant attention in this field due to its softness, adhesion, and skin‐like mechanical properties. However, these bioelectrodes currently suffer from degradation of adhesion, electrical conductivity, and skin‐compliance when exposed to aqueous environments. This significantly limits the application of bioelectrodes. Herein, a customizable biohydrogel that can be applied on skin or fabric by solvent volatilization for liquid ink‐gel film conversion is reported. The biohydrogel's distinct characteristic of transitioning between a liquid and hydrogel phase establishes superb conformal contact and dynamic compliance with the epidermis. This effectively eliminates motion artifacts and results in lower contact impedance and noise in both static and dynamic states when compared to existing bioelectrodes. The biohydrogel is applied to the cotton fabric to create electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring garments. These garments enable the acquisition of ECG signals with high accuracy in aqueous environment for over 72 h. Besides, the biohydrogel‐based garments outperform the commercial gel electrodes by 83.5% in signal‐to‐noise ratio. Additionally, the cotton/biohydrogel electrode facilitates multi‐channel, high‐fidelity recording of ECG signals, enabling high‐performance capture and classification of ECG waveforms across multiple channels. An on‐skin paintable water‐resistant biohydrogel is introduced. By dynamically modulating the hydrogen bond linkage, the ink of the biohydrogel is capable of converting to a film within 2 min and forming a seamless interface. The obtained biohydrogel performs water‐resistant, skin‐like, and ethanol‐triggered removal properties. Besides, multi‐channel and high‐fidelity electrocardiogram detection is achieved by applying the biohydrogel.