Hydrogel Exhibits Never Seen Before Electrical Performance - Stanford University

Stanford Chemical Engineering Professors have developed an electrically conductive hydrogel i.e essentially a jelly that looks like biological tissues, but conducts electricity like a metal. This gel, they say, is easy to make and using an inkjet printer it can be patterned onto surfaces, printed or sprayed as a liquid and turned back into a gel. And here is where it gets more interesting. This material demonstrates a remarkable and never seen before electrical performance.

Development of this gel involved binding long chains of the organic compound aniline together with phytic acid, found naturally in plant tissues, to form a complex, sponge-like structure. Thus, being extremely porous, we can see a substantial increase in the amount of charge this hydrogel can hold, its ability to sense chemicals, and the rapidity of its electrical response.

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Postdoctoral fellow Guihua Yu, Associate Professor Zhenan Bao and visiting scholar Lijia Pan examine the hydrogel made in the Bao lab. (Photo: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service)

Owing to its unusual structure, unlike others when this hydrogel links polymer chains, it also lends them charge. This effect makes the hydrogel highly conductive. Moreover, this substance being very similar to biological tissues, makes it the best so far to find usage in biological systems that communicate with technological hardware. The team of researchers wants to see their hydrogel being used in medical probes, in biological sensors to biofuel cells and in high-energy density capacitors. We look forward to these amazing applications.

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