Development of conductive hydrogels: from design mechanisms to frontier applications

Owing to their excellent mechanical flexibility, electrical conductivity, and biocompatibility, conductive hydrogels (CHs) are widely used in the fields of energy and power, and biomedical technology. To arrive at a better understanding of the design methods and development trends of CHs, this paper summarizes and analyzes related research published in recent years. First, we describe the properties and characteristics of CHs. Using Scopus, the world’s largest abstract and citation database, we conducted a quantitative analysis of the related literature from the past 15 years and summarized development trends in the field of CHs. Second, we describe the types of CH network crosslinking and basic functional design methods and summarize the three-dimensional (3D) structure-forming methods and conductive performance tests of CHs. In addition, we introduce applications of CHs in the fields of energy and power, biomedical technology, and others. Lastly, we discuss several problems in current CH research and introduce some prospects for the future development of CHs. Graphic abstract