Research Progress in Conducting Polymer Hydrogels and Their Strain Sensing Properties

Conducting polymer hydrogels (CPH) here refer to hydrogels contain polyaniline, polypyrrole or polythiophene as conducting components in their matrix. The water rich environment of hydrogels is beneficial for maintaining the protonic acid doped state of conducting polymers, whereas the conducting polymers with organic backbone are more appropriate to be incorporated into hydrogel matrix in compassion with other conducting fillers. Conducting polymer hydrogels thus exhibit highly tunable properties especially interesting strain sensing behaviour, and become a highly concerned material for flexible electronics at present. This review focused on the construction strategies to CPH and summarized the methods to combine the hydrophilic polymer networks with rigid conducting polymers. The key issues to improve the mechanical, conducting, and anti-freezing properties of CPH were analyzed, and the strain sensing behavior of recently reported CPH were also evaluated. © 2024 Cailiao Daobaoshe/ Materials Review. All rights reserved.