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Abstract The application of gel wearable sensors in aquatic environments is very promising, however, the preparation of underwater gel sensors with excellent anti‐swelling properties and sensing performance remains a great challenge. In this paper, a solvent exchange strategy is proposed to fabricate an anti‐swelling gel, in which the hydrophobic segments are induced to gather and microphase separation occurs inside the gel. The prepared gel possesses excellent anti‐swelling performance (swelling ratio of 4.79%), good mechanical properties (tensile strain of 712%), high sensitivity (GF = 1.07), and high linearity (R 2 = 0.998, 0 to 70% strain range). Moreover, it can achieve high stability (more than 90 days) and fatigue resistance (1000 cycles at 50% strain) as an underwater sensor. Therefore, the designed underwater gel strain sensors can be utilized for monitoring human motion information, underwater distress and smart alarms, revealing the great potential application in the field of underwater strain sensors.
Jiang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.