A Superhydrophobic Hydrogel for Self-Healing and Robust Strain Sensor with Liquid Impalement Resistance

Main observation and conclusion The superhydrophobic strain sensor is a fantastic direction, which could protect the strain sensor in harsh environment. Nevertheless, the self-healing superhydrophobic strain sensor has not been reported. In this research, we developed a superhydrophobic strain sensor, which demonstrated excellent self-healing, mechanical robustness, and liquid impalement resistance simultaneously. The key innovation is to partially embed hydrophobic graphene and carbon nanotubes into the hydrogel matrix. The hodrogel substrate endows the sample with self-healing property. The graphene, carbon nanotubes and hydrogel together lead to an accurate and real-time monitoring of human motion. Furthermore, the prepared sample demonstrated super-robust superhydrophobicity, which retained superhydrophobicity after many kinds of damage (such as 1000% stretch, 10000 stretching-releasing cycles, hand-rub, tape-peeling, and high-speed drop/jet impact).