Self-healing conductive hydrogels: preparation, properties and applications

Conductive hydrogels have generated great interest in biomedical and electrical fields. However, conventional conductive hydrogels usually lack self-healing properties, which might be unfavorable for their application. Conductive self-healing hydrogels with excellent performance for applications in the biomedical and electrical fields are growing in number. In this review paper, the progress related to conductive self-healing hydrogels is summarized. The self-healing mechanism is classified to demonstrate the design and synthesis of conductive self-healing hydrogels and their applications in tissue engineering, wound healing, electronic skin, sensors and self-repaired circuits are presented and discussed. The future development of conductive self-healing hydrogels and problems that need to be solved are also described.