Conductive polymer hydrogels (CPHs) hold significant promise in broad applications, such as bioelectronics and energy devices. Hitherto, the development of a facile and scalable synthesis method for CPHs with high electrical conductivity and biocompatibility has still been a challenge. Herein, we demonstrate highly conductive PPy-PEDOT:PSS hybrid hydrogels which are prepared by a simple solution-mixing method. This fabrication method involves the mixing of a pyrrole monomer with a PEDOT:PSS dispersion, followed by in situ chemical oxidative polymerization to form polypyrrole (PPy). The electrostatic interaction between negatively charged PSS and positively charged conjugated PPy facilitates the formation of PPy-PEDOT:PSS hybrid hydrogels. The conductivity of the PPy-PEDOT:PSS hybrid hydrogels is 867 S m-1. The PPy-PEDOT:PSS hybrid hydrogels show excellent biocompatibility. Moreover, the PPy-PEDOT:PSS hybrid hydrogels have a hierarchical porous structure which facilitates the 3D cell culture within the hydrogels. The PPy-PEDOT:PSS hybrid hydrogels exhibit excellent in situ biomolecular detection and real-time cell proliferation monitoring performance, indicating their potential as highly sensitive electrochemical biosensors for bioelectronics applications. Our strategy for the fabrication of CPHs with the electrostatic interaction between the negatively charged conductive polymer and positively charged conductive polymer would provide new opportunities for the design of highly conductive conjugated hydrogels for bioelectronics applications and energy devices.
Keywords: PEDOT:PSS; bioelectronics; cell sensing; conductive hybrid hydrogels; polypyrrole.