A self-healing stretchable hydrogel sensor for hand movement disorder monitoring

The key to accurately quantifying hand movement disorders lies in the support of high-performance sensors. However, existing sensing technologies struggle to simultaneously meet the dual demands of high sensitivity and a wide strain range. Moreover, current sensors suffer from drawbacks such as the inability to repair after mechanical damage and performance degradation during long-term use. To address these challenges, a self-healing stretchable hydrogel (SHSH) sensor based on acrylamide glycinamide (NAGA) and acrylamide (AAm) is proposed. Experimental results demonstrate that the sensor exhibits excellent sensitivity, high linearity, low hysteresis error, and repeatability error within the strain range of 0-100%. After autonomous healing at 50 ℃ for 20 minutes, the self-healing efficiency reaches 84.8% without significant changes in sensor performance, indicating good self-healing ability. In addition, when attached to hand joints, the SHSH sensor can reliably monitor movements with different amplitudes and frequencies (covering 0.2-2 Hz), and can effectively distinguish both joint movement amplitudes and low-frequency micro-tremors. These results prove its potential application value in the fields of intelligent medical care and personalized diagnosis.