Hydrophobic Bioadhesive Composites for Human Motion Detection

Conductive hydrogels are rapidly rising as sensing materials for bioelectronics applications, but lack mechanical and adhesion strength due to their excess water content. We propose a diazirine-grafted polycaprolactone adhesive (CaproGlu)/carbon nanotubes (CNTs) composite that can provide wet adhesion and strong mechanical properties at the tissue-machine interface. The introduced CNTs not only reinforced the CaproGlu, but also formed electrically conducting pathways. The CaproGlu composites exhibited conductivity of 0.1 S m-1 and a charge storage capacity of 5 μC cm-2. The resulting composites are biocompatible and can be used as strain sensors to detect mechanical deformations.