Electrically conductive hydrogels are hydrogels that combine the characteristic properties of hydrogels and electrically conductive materials. This makes them ideal for the design and construction of flexible active hydrogel electrodes in supercapacitors used for electrical energy storage. However, since hydrogels are generally mechanically brittle and prone to damage, different methods can be used to design hydrogels into 3D lattice structures that are more durable and allow for fast electron transfer and ion diffusion within the overall lattice. Such hydrogels become elastically compressible, have a higher Young's modulus and are generally more resistant to various mechanical deformations, while of course retaining excellent conductive properties. This wide range of excellent properties of conductive hydrogels opens up a wide range of applications for a myriad of dynamic energy storage applications. The crosslinking of conductive hydrogels mainly uses conductive polymers such as PEDOT, PANI and PPy, and additives such as carbonaceous materials and metal particles to improve the hydrogel structure itself. In this work, after a brief review of the basic properties of conductive hydrogels, a more detailed description of PEDOT-based conductive hydrogels for use in the electrodes of simple supercapacitors is given, followed by a comparison of PEDOT/PANI, PEDOT-PVA, PEDOT and PEDOT:PSS composite hydrogels on the basis of mechanical and electrochemical properties.
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