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REVIEW ARTICLE

Electrically Conducting Hydrogels for Health

care: Concept, Fabrication Methods, and Applications

Shweta Agarwala
Department of Engineering, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

Abstract: Electrically conducting hydrogels are gaining increasing attention due to their potential application in smart
patches, biosensors, functional tissue engineering scaffolds, wound management, and implants. The current review
focuses on these novel materials, their synthesis routes, and their composites. Special attention is paid to fabrication
routes to produce functional composites with organic and inorganic components. The design of conductive hydrogels
leads to inheritance of the advantages of each component and offers new features from the synergistic effects between
the components, thus opening new application areas. The review also discusses the emerging role of 3D printing as an
advanced approach toward new design, functionality, and material combination possibilities. The issue of lack of the
spatial control with current techniques is highlighted, and possible new routes to solve it are discussed. The review
will provide readers with knowledge tool to select appropriate methodology for designing desired hydrogel material
composites.

Keywords: Conducting hydrogel, hydrogel composite, 3D printing, tissue engineering

*Corresponding Author: Shweta Agarwala, Department of Engineering, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Email: shweta@eng.au.dk
Received: March 20, 2020; Accepted: April 19, 2020, Published Online: April 30, 2020

Citation: Agarwala, 2020. Electrically Conducting Hydrogels for Health care: Concept, Fabrication Methods, and Applications,
Int J Bioprint, 6(2):273. DOI: 10.18063/ijb.v6i2.273

1 Introduction Human body is a resident for electrical energy.
Many research work has been focusing on
Biological functions are complex and replicating understanding the effect of electrical signal on
them requires understanding and transforming cells . It is predicted that electrical stimulation
[3]
variety signals such as biochemical, electrical, can impact cells adhesion, differentiation, and
and mechanical. A large number of materials have growth, but the underlying phenomenon is
been developed as bioactive scaffolds to transmit not well understood. Recent developments in
such signals. Hydrogels have been at the forefront bioelectronics, bioionics, and neural interfaces
of the material development especially for tissue have placed demands for electrically conducting
engineering. They possess ideal characteristics scaffolds [4,5] . Although hydrogels have found
of extra-cellular matrix (ECM), cell support, niche application in tissue engineering, they are
biocompatibility, and Young’s modulus close to inherently insulating by nature. Recent research has
human tissue [1,2] . Hydrogels have spatially cross- shown that hydrogels not only possess necessary
linked chain network composed of natural and/ characteristics to support biological species
or synthetic hydrophilic polymer chains that can but can also interface with electrical circuitry
absorb a large amount of water while maintaining if modified [4,5] . Hence, research on conducting
3D structure, which makes them highly compatible hydrogels have gained widespread interest for
for biomedical applications . applications such as health recording electrodes,
[2]
© 2020 Agarwala. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited.
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