Qiang Chen

Henan Polytechnic University | HPU · School of Materials Science and Engineering

This paper presents a discussion on the method, mechanism, and application of adhesive hydrogel in enhancing epidermal signal, focusing on the interface between hydrogel and skin. Due to its excellent conductivity and high adaptability to the skin, the hydrogel is exceptionally suitable for detecting human-machine interfaces, particularly epidermal...

Adhesive hydrogels play a crucial role in numerous applications across fields such as wound dressing, biomedical implants, and flexible electronics. Despite recent efforts on hydrogel design, reconciling the conflicting requirements of adaptability to rough surfaces and intrinsic strength remains elusive for self‐adhesive hydrogels. To address this...

Zwitterionic hydrogels are electrically neutral materials with both cationic and anionic groups that impart excellent anti-fouling properties and ion channel orientations. However, pure zwitterionic hydrogels generally exhibit low strength and toughness. In this study, it has been discovered that polymerizable zwitterionic monomers in aqueous solut...

Hydrogels are considered as promising materials for human‐machine interfaces (HMIs) owing to their merits of tailorable mechanical and electrical properties; nevertheless, it remains challenging to simultaneously achieve ultrasoftness, good mechanical robustness and high sensitivity, which are the pre‐requisite requirements for wearable sensing app...

The arch wire (AW) plays an important role in providing continuous force, aligning the teeth, and excellent dental arch stability for orthodontic treatment. However, the high friction performance of the AW surface can increase bacterial adhesion and colonization, leading to oral hygiene problems. Herein, a simple method is developed to modify the s...

Flexible strain sensors, particularly crack‐based ones, have evoked great interests in recent years because of their excellent sensitivity and promising applications in health monitoring and human‐machine interactions. However, the poor durability originated from the weak interfacial bonding between fragile conductive layer and stretchable elastic...

Supercapacitors exhibiting toughness, self-healing, and high specific capacitance have practical significance for use in flexible and wearable electronic equipment. To meet these requirements, a novel multifunctional gel polymer electrolyte (GPE) consisting of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-sodium alginate (SA)-K3[Fe(CN)]6-Na2SO4 was prepared. In this GPE...

In the past few years, in-situ polymerization of polyaniline (PANI) on hydrogel polymer electrolyte (HPE) has been usually applied to fabricate flexible all-in-one supercapacitors, but many HPEs suffer from severe...

Flexible supercapacitors have attracted more and more attention because of their promising applications in wearable electronics, however, it is still important to harmonize their mechanical and electrochemical properties for practical applications. In the present work, a seamless transition between polyaniline (PANI) electrode and NH4VO3_FeSO4 dual...

Flexible supercapacitor has been proved a promising candidate for wearable electronics due to its high power density, fast charge/discharge rates and long life cycle. Gel polymer electrolyte (GPE), an important component of supercapacitor, combines high ionic conductivity of liquid electrolyte and great safety of solid electrolyte. To satisfy the p...

Biomimetic tough hydrogels composed of a biopolymer and a large amount of water, which show high mechanical and lubricating properties, are of great significance for articular cartilage application. In conventional tough hydrogel materials, there is a conflicting relationship between the lubricating capacity (hydration capacity) and the load-bearin...

Although many hydrogels have been applied to wearable sensors, it is still challenging to simultaneously realize hydrogels with optical transparency, superior mechanical properties, excellent sensing performance, and anti-freezing by using inexpensive raw materials and an easy preparation process. Herein, using ethylene glycol/H2O (EG/ H2O) as a so...

Hydrogels are often used to fabricate strain sensors; however, they also suffer from freezing at low temperatures and become dry during long-time storage. Encapsulation of hydrogels with elastomers is one of the methods to solve these problems although the adhesion between hydrogels and elastomers is usually low. In this work, using bovine serum pr...

Ionic conductive hydrogel-based sensors have been capturing growing attention in various areas, but still cannot satisfy the operating requirements of next generation wearable electronics. Herein, inspired by biosystems, we demonstrate ionic conductive supramolecular hydrogels with simple one-step method based on salting-out effect and multiple hyd...

Hydrogels have been widely used in wet tissues. However, the insufficient adhesion of hydrogels for wound hemostasis remains a grand challenge. Herein, a facile yet effective strategy is developed to fabricate tough wet adhesion of hydrogen-bond-based hydrogel (PAAcVI hydrogel) using copolymerization of acrylic acid and 1-vinylimidazole in dimethyl...

Hydrogels are widely used in electronic devices due to their excellent properties. However, traditional hydrogels have problems such as freezing at low temperature and loss of water. Herein, a super‐stretchable, tough, self‐healing, and transparent supramolecular ionogel was fabricated by polymerizing N‐hydroxyethyl acrylamide in deep eutectic solv...

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) possess the advantages of tailorable porosity, adjustable composition, and tunable topologies and are considered promising precursors and self‐templates for the synthesis of complex nanostructures as advanced electrode materials for energy storage. Among various strategies, wet‐chemical method endows better control o...

The boom in nanotechnology brings new insights into the development of artificial enzymes (nanozymes) with ease of modification, lower manufacturing cost, and higher catalytic stability than natural enzymes. Among various nanomaterials, two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials exhibit promising enzyme-like properties for a plethora of bioapplications owi...

Repeatability and high adhesion toughness are usually contradictory for common polymer adhesives. Repeatability requires temporary interactions between the adhesive and the substrate, while high adhesion toughness is usually achieved by permanent bonding. Integrating these two features into one adhesive system is still a daunting challenge. Here, t...

Human beings cannot live without elastomers, which exist almost everywhere in human life nowadays. Although elastomers with a variety of features are developed for specific applications, a timeless topic is how to toughen them, because mechanical properties always determine the reliability and lifespan of the utilized elastomers. Toughening of a so...

To meet the practical application requirements of the flexible supercapacitors, the improvements of the toughness and energy density attract more and more attention. Herein, a physically cross-linked double network alkaline gel polymer electrolyte (AGPE) membrane based on PVA and kappa-carrageenan is developed. In this AGPE membrane, KOH plays a du...

As a new type of flexible electronics, without external power supply wearable self-powered sensing devices have attracted more and more attention. However, poor flexibility, anti-fatigue and anti-freezing limit their applications....

Correction for ‘Self-powered wearable sensing devices based on a flexible ammonium-ion battery with fatigue resistance and frost resistance based on a strong and tough hydrogel’ by Jia Yang et al. , J. Mater. Chem. C , 2022, https://doi.org/10.1039/d2tc04455b.

Protein-based hydrogels have attracted great attention due to their excellent biocompatible properties, but often suffer from weak mechanical strength. Conventional strengthening strategies for protein-based hydrogels are to introduce nanoparticles or synthetic polymers for improving their mechanical strength, but often compromise their biocompatib...

Double network hydrogels (DN gels) demonstrate extremely high strength and toughness; however, conventional DN gels are fully chemically crosslinked, which are often softening and lack self-healing. Here, a new type of fully physical DN (P-DN) gels, that is, K⁺ ions crosslinked κ-carrageenan (K⁺C) microgel (MG) composite hydrophobically crosslinked...

Solid polymer electrolytes have promising applications in a wide variety of fields compared with liquid electrolytes; however, the promotion of ionic conductivity is still necessary and the composition with nanoparticles is an effective way. In this paper, the composite alkaline solid polymer electrolyte membrane is prepared from poly (vinyl alcoho...

Ionic conductive double network (DN) sensors have attracted increasing attention in wearable electronic devices. However, their low mechanical and sensing properties as well as poor moisture retention and freezing resistance restrict severely their applications. Herein, we synthesized a fully physical cross-linked poly (N-hydroxymethyl acrylamide)/...

Despite great efforts that have been made to develop high performance carbonaceous materials via structure design for charge storage applications, constructing tubular architectures composed of hierarchically nanoscale building units is challenging due to the lack of suitable synthetic method. Herein, using zeolitic imidazolate framework‐8 (ZIF‐8)...

In this work, semi-crystalline nanocomposite hydrogels (i.e., PAAmA11A/GO gels) were synthesized by micellar copolymerization of acrylamide and N-acryloyl-11-aminoundecanoic acid (A11A) in the presence of a large amount of sodium dodecyl sulfonate (SDS) micelles and GO nanosheets. The resulted hydrogels (SMHs) not only demonstrated high strength an...

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), particularly molybdenum diselenides (MoSe2), have the merits of their unique two-dimensional (2D) layered structures, large interlayer spacing (∼0.64 nm), good electrical conductivities, and high theoretical capacities when applied in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) as anode materials. However, MoSe2 remains su...

Amorphous pseudocapacitive nanomaterials are highly desired in energy storage applications for their disordered crystal structures, fast electrochemical dynamics, and outstanding cyclic stability, yet hardly achievable using the state-of-the-art synthetic strategies. Herein, for the first time, high capacitive fiber electrodes embedded with nanosiz...

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries as power supply systems possessing a theoretical energy density of as high as 2600 Wh kg-1 are considered promising alternatives toward the currently used lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, the insulation characteristic and huge volume change of sulfur, the generation of dissolvable lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) d...

The weak adhesion between two hydrogel layers may lead to the delamination of bilayer hydrogels or low force transfer efficiency during deformation. Here, tough interfacial adhesive bilayer hydrogels with rapid shape deformation and recovery were prepared by simple attachment-heating of two gel layers. The bilayer hydrogels, composed of a shape mem...

It is significant to design stretchable conductive hydrogels with high integrated mechanical and excellent anti-freezing performances for broadening their application fields. Herein, a freezing-tolerant and robust poly(N-hydroxymethyl acrylamide)/gelatin/glycerol supramolecular conductive hydrogel with double networks is synthesized via an one-pot...

The major obstacle in developing nanozymes which are considered as promising alternatives to nature enzymes is their moderate performance, including poor affinity to substrates, low catalytic activity, and severe pH-dependence. To address these issues, herein, we synthesize ultrathin LDH nanosheets with a thickness of 1.4 nm and an average lateral...

Flexible energy storage devices with ultrahigh areal capacity and excellent cycling stability are highly desired for portable and wearable electronics. Bimetal hydroxides with low crystallinity are preferred as electrode materials due to their advantageous features of high electrochemical performance, rapid ion diffusion and high structure stabilit...

Self-healability and cold-resistance will greatly improve the reliability of an energy-storage device in case of physical damage and subzero environment, which bring higher and higher requirement to electrolyte. Herein, a multifunctional supramolecular gel polymer electrolyte is prepared, which includes the first cross-linking network between PVA a...

In order to enhance the charge storage capability of carbonaceous fibers for wearable supercapacitors, efforts have been devoted to the incorporation of transition metal dichalcogenides (e.g., MoS2), nevertheless the improvement is moderate since the electrochemical properties of MoS2 severely depend on their crystal phase and interlayer spacing. H...

Because wire-meshes have a great potential application for designing high-efficient heat and mass transfer systems, a deformable bubble of Re ∼ 800 rising in still tap-water near a vertical mesh of different porosity is studied using a high-speed shadowgraphy apparatus including two mutually perpendicular projections. We focus on the effect of the...

Although great efforts have been devoted to exploiting electrode materials with designed composition and nanostructure for high-performance electrochemical energy storage devices, it remains critically challenging to achieve hierarchically tubular architectures constructed with different low-dimensional building blocks due to the lack of appropriat...

Fiber‐based supercapacitors (FSCs) possess great potential as an ideal type of power source for future weaveable/wearable electronics and electronic‐textiles. The performance of FSCs is, without doubt, primarily determined by the properties of fibrous electrodes. Carbonaceous fibers, e.g., commercial carbon fibers, newly developed graphene fibers,...

Engineering coordination compounds, e.g., prussian blue (PB) and its analogues (PBAs), with designable complex nanostructures via chemical etching holds great opportunities for improving energy storage performances by adjusting topological geometry, selectively exposing active sites, tuning electronic properties and enhancing accessible surface are...

In order to balance electrochemical kinetics with loading level for achieving efficient energy storage with high areal capacity and good rate capability simultaneously for wearable electronics, herein, 2D mesh-like vertical structures (NiCo2S4@Ni(OH)2) with a high mass loading of 2.17 mg cm⁻² and combined merits of both 1D nanowires and 2D nanoshee...

Natural protein-based hydrogels possess excellent biocompatibility; however, most of them are weak or brittle. In the present work, high strength hybrid dual-crosslinking BSA gels (BSA DC gels), which have both chemical cross-linking and physical cross-linking, were fabricated by a facile photoreaction-heating process. BSA DC gels showed high trans...

Wearable strain sensors are emerging rapidly for their promising applications in human motion detection for diagnosis, healthcare, training instruction and rehabilitation exercise assessment. However, it remains a bottleneck in gaining comfortable and breathable devices with the features of high sensitivity, linear response and tunable detection ra...

It is a challenge to realize high strength, toughness and energy storage, as well as excellent capacitive self-recovery, fatigue-resistant and self-healing performances simultaneously in a single all-in-one supercapacitor aiming for wearable electronics. Herein, based on the self-crosslinking and molecular template, a supramolecular poly(vinyl alco...

Flexible, water-resistant, and air-stable hydrogen storage material (named PMMA-LiBH4/GMF), consisting of LiBH4 nanoparticles confined by poly (methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) modified melamine foam (GMF), were prepared by a facile method. PMMA-LiBH4/GMF can recover original shape after compression at the strain of 50% a...

The increasing demands of portable, flexible, and wearable electronics have greatly stimulated the development of miniaturized supercapacitors (MSCs) with features of high flexibility, low weight, long lifespan, and safety. The techniques which can effectively incorporate functional nanomaterials into flexible electrodes are extremely important for...

Development and fabrication of stimuli-responsive polymers into hydrogel strain sensors with high sensitivity and specificity to subtle changes in environmental stimuli have open the door for exploring the opportunities from fundamental materials design principles to emerging applications of electronic skins, health monitors, and human-machine inte...

To meet the requirement of the flexible supercapacitors, the enhancement of the mechanical properties of the gel polymer electrolyte (GPE) membrane attracts more and more attention. Here a novel PAM-PVP GPE has been developed with a semi-interpenetrating (semi-IPN) structure, which can achieve the superior flexibility and stretchability (elongation...

As an essential member of 2D materials, MXene (e.g., Ti3C2Tx) is highly preferred for energy storage owing to a high surface‐to‐volume ratio, shortened ion diffusion pathway, superior electronic conductivity, and neglectable volume change, which are beneficial for electrochemical kinetics. However, the low theoretical capacitance and restacking iss...

Thanks to their light-weight, wearing comfort, and amenability to be woven into textiles, solid-state fiber supercapacitors (FSCs) have been considered as promising energy storage devices for wearable electronics. Carbon fibers (CFs) have the merits of both superior mechanical strength and conductivity, excellent flexibility, doped by heteroatoms,...

Multiple stretchability has never been demonstrated as supercapacitors because the hydrogel used cannot fully recover after being heavily deformed. Now, a highly reversibly stretchable all‐polymer supercapacitor was fabricated using a developed double network hydrogel (DN hydrogel) as electrolyte and pure polypyrrole (PPy) as electrode. The DN hydr...

Nanozymes have been extensively investigated to imitate protein enzymes in biomimetic chemistry and the identification of active site is believed to be the pre-requisite before one can effectively regulate their activity. Herein, ultrathin NiCo LDH nanosheets are synthesized through a fast co-precipitation at room temperature and can be stably disp...

Many stretchable supercapacitors have been reported based on hydrogel electrolytes. However, multiple stretchability has never been demonstrated because the hydrogel usually cannot fully recover after being heavily deformed (stretchable but not elastic). That is, most stretchable supercapacitors can only be stretched a few times, then they will die...

It is imperative to achieve excellent mechanical and electrical properties in a single hydrogel. Herein, based on hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic associations, poly (N-hydroxymethyl acrylamide) hydrophobic associated hydrogels (PHMA HA gels) with dual physically cross-linked networks, were prepared through micellar copolymerization of N-hydroxymethy...

Natural protein hydrogels are considered as the promising candidates for biomaterials. However, natural protein hydrogels often exhibit poor mechanical properties. Herein, using bovine serum albumin (BSA) as natural protein model, a new kind of D/C-hybrid DN gels, consisting of tetrakis(hydroxymethyl)phosphonium chloride (THPC) cross-linked BSA (TH...

A green physical route for producing novel multifunctional polyvinyl alcohol/kappa-carrageenan alkaline gel polymer electrolyte is developed, which is based on double-network physical cross-linked hydrogel. The alkaline gel polymer electrolyte has excellent tensile stress (2.22 MPa), stretchability (12.43 mm/mm) and ionic conductivity (0.21 S/cm)....