Soft conductors show great promise in multifunctional sensor applications. However, both electronically and ionically conductive materials are often vulnerable during large deformation or at low temperatures, leading to reduced sensitivity, which is usually overlooked and remains an unaddressed challenge. In this work, we report a novel zwitterionic liquid polymer hydrogel with extraordinary mechanical versatility, high transparency and conductivity, and anti-freezing ability to overcome the above limitations. The conductive zwitterionic nanochannels formed by the zwitterionic liquid (ZIL) and methacrylate lysine (LysMA) endow the hydrogel with excellent conductivity and low-temperature tolerance. Furthermore, the hydrogel exhibited high transparency, remarkable stretchability (over 2000%), self-healing properties, high adhesiveness to diverse substrates and high conductivity, even at low temperatures (−40 °C). These attributes are advantageous for sensor applications. Owing to these outstanding properties, the hydrogel was evaluated for a skin sensor application, and the hydrogel-based sensor showed a gauge factor (GF) of up to 6.42 and 14.96 with and without LiCl, respectively. More importantly, this hydrogel exhibits high strain sensitivity over an extremely broad workable range with good stability and repeatability. In conclusion, the zwitterionic liquid-based electronic sensor with flexible, stretchable, self-healing and anti-freezing properties is a promising candidate for strain sensors and ionic skin for wearable electronic devices.

Background: Acute lung injury (ALI), a severe health-threatening disease, has a risk of causing chronic pulmonary fibrosis. Informative and powerful evidence suggests that inflammation and oxidative stress play a central role in the pathogenesis of ALI. Quercetin is well recognized for its excellent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, which showed great potential for ALI treatment. However, the application of quercetin is often hindered by its low solubility and bioavailability. Therefore, to overcome these challenges, an inhalable quercetin-alginate nanogel (QU-Nanogel) was fabricated, and by this special “material-drug” structure, the solubility and bioavailability of quercetin were significantly enhanced, which could further increase the activity of quercetin and provide a promising therapy for ALI. Results: QU-Nanogel is a novel alginate and quercetin based “material-drug” structural inhalable nanogel, in which quercetin was stabilized by hydrogen bonding to obtain a “co-construct” water-soluble nanogel system, showing antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. QU-Nanogel has an even distribution in size of less than 100 nm and good biocompatibility, which shows a stronger protective and antioxidant effect in vitro. Tissue distribution results provided evidence that the QU-Nanogel by ultrasonic aerosol inhalation is a feasible approach to targeted pulmonary drug delivery. Moreover, QU-Nanogel was remarkably reversed ALI rats by relieving oxidative stress damage and acting the down-regulation effects of mRNA and protein expression of inflammation cytokines via ultrasonic aerosol inhalation administration. Conclusions: In the ALI rat model, this novel nanogel showed an excellent therapeutic effect by ultrasonic aerosol inhalation administration by protecting and reducing pulmonary inflammation, thereby preventing subsequent pulmonary fibrosis. This work demonstrates that this inhalable QU-Nanogel may function as a promising drug delivery strategy in treating ALI. Graphical

To tackle challenges associated with traditional drug carriers, investigators have explored cells, cellular membrane, and macromolecular components including proteins and exosomes for the fabricati...