Jellyfish-Like Hydrogels for Transparent, Self-Healing and Ultra-Strechabile Sensors and Actuators

We present the synthesis and characterizations of jellyfish inspired biomimetic hydrogels for potential applications in transparent, self-healing, and ultra-stretchable sensors and actuators. Compared to the state-of-art, this work achieved five distinctive advancements: (1) highly transparent with ~85% transmittance within the visible light range; (2) ultra-stretchable without mechanical failure under more than 1100% applied strain; (3) excellent self-healing capability with broken pieces fully amended visually in 24 hours and piezoresistive gauge factor increased from 1.4 to 2.3; (4) highly adhesive with the self-bonding property, and (5) demonstrations of strain sensing and mechanical actuating for various potential applications.