Food-Inspired, High-Sensitivity Piezoresistive Graphene Hydrogels

• Published in: ACS sustainable chemistry & engineering Vol. 11; no. 5; pp. 1820 - 1827
• Main Authors: Aljarid, Adel A. K., Doty, Kevin L., Wei, Cencen, Salvage, Jonathan P., Boland, Conor S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 06-02-2023
• Subjects: nanocomposite; biodegradable; strain sensing; food-grade; impact sensing; brown algae
• ISSN: 2168-0485; 2168-0485
• DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c06101

There is a societal need for electronic materials to meet sustainability standards to facilitate the creation of easily disposed of green devices. Commonly, polymer-based materials applied to create strain-sensing devices utilize hazardous solvents and nonrecyclable resources that are unsuitable for these goals. Here, we demonstrate a simple system based on food-grade algae that we mix with a pristine, aqueous graphene suspension to create nanocomposite films that were processed into biodegradable hydrogels, again using food-based culinary products. We report our hydrogels to have record low Young’s moduli of ∼0.6 Pa for a nanocomposite and record high gauge factors of G ∼ 50 for a hydrogel system. Our sustainable graphene algae hydrogels were so sensitive that they could measure an object just 2 mg in mass, equivalent to a single rain droplet, impacting their surface.