As the key sensing component of flexible sensors, conductive hydrogels are prone to mechanical property degradation and signal deterioration owing to water absorption and swelling in underwater environments. Herein, an anti-swelling ion-conducting hydrogels are designed by incorporating ferric chloride (FeCl3) and β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) into acrylamide-acrylic acid copolymer (MA) via a one-pot method, short for MAFxDy. Thanks to the synergism of β-CD and Fe3+, the swelling ratio of MAFxDy is significantly reduced comparted to its counterparts, for example, 4% for MAF0.2D0.3, compared to 760% for MAF0.2 hydrogel without β-CD and 526% for MAD0.3 without Fe3+ after soaking in deionized water for 30 days. Notably, the multimodal underwater sensor constructed based on the MAF0.2D0.3 hydrogel can not only monitor underwater human joint motion but also realizes the accurate transmission of underwater information with the help of Morse code. Moreover, aided by machine learning algorithms, this study proposes a novel shortcut key recognition strategy to achieve precise and rapid information transmission via letter recognition (with a recognition accuracy of 98.6%), dramatically shortening the time required for underwater communication. This study provides innovative solutions by the rational design of anti-swelling ion-conducting hydrogels for reliable and fast underwater communications.
Dong et al. (2026) studied this question.