Printable elastomeric electrodes with sweat-enhanced conductivity for wearables

Jian Lv; Gurunathan Thangavel; Yi Li; Jiaqing Xiong; Dace Gao; Jinghao Ciou; Matthew Wei Ming Tan; Izzat Aziz; Shaohua Chen; Juntong Chen; Xinran Zhou; Wei Church Poh; Pooi See Lee

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abg8433

Printable elastomeric electrodes with sweat-enhanced conductivity for wearables

Jian Lv, Gurunathan Thangavel, Yi Li, Jiaqing Xiong, Dace Gao, Jinghao Ciou, Matthew Wei Ming Tan, Izzat Aziz, Shaohua Chen, Juntong Chen, Xinran Zhou, Wei Church Poh, Pooi See Lee^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

51 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We rationally synthesized the thermoplastic and hydrophilic poly(urethane-acrylate) (HPUA) binder for a type of printable and stretchable Ag flakes-HPUA (Ag-HPUA) electrodes in which the conductivity can be enhanced by human sweat. In the presence of human sweat, the synergistic effect of Cl⁻ and lactic acid enables the partial removal of insulating surfactant on silver flakes and facilitates sintering of the exposed silver flakes, thus the resistance of Ag-HPUA electrodes can be notably reduced in both relaxed and stretched state. The on-body data show that the resistance of one electrode has been decreased from 3.02 to 0.62 ohm during the subject's 27-min sweating activity. A stretchable textile sweat-activated battery using Ag-HPUA electrodes as current collectors and human sweat as the electrolyte was constructed for wearable electronics. The enhanced conductivity of the wearable wiring electrode from the reaction with sweat would provide meritorious insight into the design of wearable devices.

Original language	English
Article number	eabg8433
Journal	Science advances
Volume	7
Issue number	29
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abg8433
Publication status	Published - Jul 2021
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

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title = "Printable elastomeric electrodes with sweat-enhanced conductivity for wearables",

abstract = "We rationally synthesized the thermoplastic and hydrophilic poly(urethane-acrylate) (HPUA) binder for a type of printable and stretchable Ag flakes-HPUA (Ag-HPUA) electrodes in which the conductivity can be enhanced by human sweat. In the presence of human sweat, the synergistic effect of Cl− and lactic acid enables the partial removal of insulating surfactant on silver flakes and facilitates sintering of the exposed silver flakes, thus the resistance of Ag-HPUA electrodes can be notably reduced in both relaxed and stretched state. The on-body data show that the resistance of one electrode has been decreased from 3.02 to 0.62 ohm during the subject's 27-min sweating activity. A stretchable textile sweat-activated battery using Ag-HPUA electrodes as current collectors and human sweat as the electrolyte was constructed for wearable electronics. The enhanced conductivity of the wearable wiring electrode from the reaction with sweat would provide meritorious insight into the design of wearable devices.",

author = "Jian Lv and Gurunathan Thangavel and Yi Li and Jiaqing Xiong and Dace Gao and Jinghao Ciou and Tan, {Matthew Wei Ming} and Izzat Aziz and Shaohua Chen and Juntong Chen and Xinran Zhou and Poh, {Wei Church} and Lee, {Pooi See}",

note = "Publisher Copyright: Copyright {\textcopyright} 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).",

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AU - Lv, Jian

AU - Thangavel, Gurunathan

AU - Li, Yi

AU - Xiong, Jiaqing

AU - Gao, Dace

AU - Ciou, Jinghao

AU - Tan, Matthew Wei Ming

AU - Aziz, Izzat

AU - Chen, Shaohua

AU - Chen, Juntong

AU - Zhou, Xinran

AU - Poh, Wei Church

AU - Lee, Pooi See

N1 - Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

PY - 2021/7

Y1 - 2021/7

N2 - We rationally synthesized the thermoplastic and hydrophilic poly(urethane-acrylate) (HPUA) binder for a type of printable and stretchable Ag flakes-HPUA (Ag-HPUA) electrodes in which the conductivity can be enhanced by human sweat. In the presence of human sweat, the synergistic effect of Cl− and lactic acid enables the partial removal of insulating surfactant on silver flakes and facilitates sintering of the exposed silver flakes, thus the resistance of Ag-HPUA electrodes can be notably reduced in both relaxed and stretched state. The on-body data show that the resistance of one electrode has been decreased from 3.02 to 0.62 ohm during the subject's 27-min sweating activity. A stretchable textile sweat-activated battery using Ag-HPUA electrodes as current collectors and human sweat as the electrolyte was constructed for wearable electronics. The enhanced conductivity of the wearable wiring electrode from the reaction with sweat would provide meritorious insight into the design of wearable devices.

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Printable elastomeric electrodes with sweat-enhanced conductivity for wearables

Abstract

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