Work

Broadband and wide-temperature dissipation continuum in a supramolecular damping organohydrogel for motion-tolerant bioelectronics

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: High-fidelity signal acquisition is the cornerstone of personalized healthcare, but wearable bioelectronics remain vulnerable to motion artifacts, which contaminate the electrophysiological signals. Conventional materials rely on discrete viscoelastic relaxation mechanisms, resulting in narrow damping bandwidths and high thermal sensitivity that fail to match the continuous, broadband nature of mechanical noise. Here, we address these limitations by engineering a dissipation continuum within a supramolecular organohydrogel. By constructing a gradient layer with nanoscale confinement at the phase boundary between the fluid and the polymer, it couples the fast viscous flow of the confined fluid with the slow segmental dynamics of the polymer network. Acting as a dynamic bridge, it expands an isolated relaxation into a continuous temporal relaxation spectrum, ensuring that the multiscale dissipation of the mechanical energy enters the dynamic network. Consequently, the material achieves a high damping factor (tan δ ≥ 0.8) across a wide temperature window (−30 to 100 oC) and a broad frequency spectrum (0.5-200 Hz). Functioning as an intrinsic broadband noise-filtering interface, it enables artifact-free electrocardiogram recordings under mechanical disturbances. By shifting noise mitigation from post-processing electronics to proactive material design, our work establishes a robust materials foundation for motion-tolerant bioelectronics operating in mechanically complex environments. It is challenging to design wearable electronics for sensing, due to motions obscuring electrophysiological signals. Here the authors designed a supramolecular organohydrogel optimizing the signal-to-noise ratio for sensors.

Source: Nature Communications

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-76626-w

Authors: Ning Zhou, Sen Liu, Zhouyue Lei, Peiyi Wu

Institutions: Donghua University, State Key Laboratory of Digital Medical Engineering, Southeast University

Language: English

Topic: Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials

Subfield: Biomedical Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $6,990

Funders: National Natural Science Foundation of China, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities