Smart bandage with integrated multifunctional sensors based on MXene-functionalized porous graphene scaffold for chronic wound care management
Three-dimensional (3D) porous laser-guided graphene (LGG) electrodes on elastomeric substrates are of great significance for developing flexible functional electronics. However, the high sheet resistance and poor mechanical properties of LGG sheets obstruct their full exploitation as electrode materials. Herein, we applied 2D MXene nanosheets to functionalize 3D LGG sheets via a C–O–Ti covalent crosslink to obtain an LGG-MXene hybrid scaffold exhibited high conductivity and improved electrochemistry with fast heterogeneous electron transfer (HET) rate due to the synergistic effect between LGG and MXene. Then we transferred the obtained hybrid scaffold onto PDMS to engineer a smart, flexible, and stretchable multifunctional sensors-integrated wound bandage capable of assessing uric acid (UA), pH, and temperature at the wound site. The integrated UA sensor exhibited a rapid response toward UA in an extended wide range of 50–1200 μM with a high sensitivity of 422.5 μA mM−1 cm−2 and an ultralow detection limit of 50 μM. Additionally, the pH sensor demonstrated a linear Nernstian response (R2 = 0.998) with a high sensitivity of −57.03 mV pH−1 in the wound relevant pH range of 4–9. The temperature sensor exhibited a fast and stable linear resistive response to the temperature variations in the physiological range of 25–50 °C with an excellent sensitivity and correlation coefficient of 0.09% ⁰C−1 and 0.999, respectively. We anticipate that this stretchable and flexible smart bandage could revolutionize wound care management and have profound impacts on the therapeutic outcomes.