Abstract:
The conductive polymer-based conductive hydrogels which introduced conductive polymers into the hydrogel network have been extensively studied because of the combination of three-dimensional network structure, good biocompatibility, excellent mechanical properties and electrical properties, especially the conductive hydrogels with polyaniline (PANI) as conductive polymer. However, PANI is insoluble in water, so it is difficult to prepare PANI-based conductive hydrogels. In order to prepare high-strength PANI based conductive hydrogels, this paper attempted to graft PANI onto the hydrophilic polymer polyacrylic acid (PAA) to obtain a PANI-PAA conductive composite that could be uniformly dispersed in water, and then it was polymerized with polyacrylamide (PAM) to obtain a strong PANI-PAA/PAM conductive hydrogel. Through mechanical and electrochemical tests, it is found that the conductive hydrogel has good mechanical and electrochemical properties. When SDS was used as dispersant, the conductivity could reach 4.63 S·m
−1, meanwhile, it could withstand compression stress of 1.33 MPa (corresponding dissipation energy of compression is 85.50 kJ·m
−3), the elongation at break is 964%, and the corresponding breaking strength is 0.25 MPa. Under the condition of NaOH as dispersant, the conductivity could reach 4.19 S·m
−1, and it could bear the compression stress of 1.13 MPa (corresponding dissipation energy of compression is 73.45 kJ·m
−3), the tensile elongation at break reaches 896%, and the corresponding fracture strength is 0.14 MPa. This study provides ideas for the preparation of high-strength polyaniline-based conductive hydrogels.