posted on 2023-07-21, 15:06authored byYingxue Wu, Liu Yang, Jiadong Wang, Sirui Li, Xianhong Zhang, Dong Chen, Yuhong Ma, Wantai Yang
The
development of degradable, cost-effective, and eco-friendly
ionic conductive gels is highly required to reduce electronic waste
originating from flexible electronic devices. However, biocompatible,
degradable, tough, and durable conductive gels are challenging to
achieve. Herein, we develop a facile strategy for the design and synthesis
of degradable tough eutectogels by integrating an electrostatically
driven supramolecular network composed of branched polyacrylic acid
(PAA) and monoethanolamine (MEA) into a green deep eutectic solvent
with chitosan quaternary ammonium salt (CQS). The specially designed
PAA/MEA/CQS eutectogels present multiple desired properties, including
high transparency, widely adjustable mechanical properties, high resilience,
reliable adhesiveness, excellent self-healing ability, good conductivity,
remarkable anti-freezing performance, and antibacterial properties.
The dynamic and reversible supramolecular interactions not only significantly
enhance the mechanical properties of the PAA/MEA/CQS eutectogels but
also enable fast degradation, addressing the dilemma between mechanical
strength and degradability. More importantly, a biocompatible and
degradable multifunctional ionic skin is successfully fabricated based
on the PAA/MEA/CQS eutectogel, exhibiting high sensitivity, a wide
sensing range, and a rapid response speed toward strain, pressure,
and temperature. Thus, this study offers a promising strategy for
fabricating degradable tough eutectogels, which show great potential
as high-performance ionic skins for next-generation flexible wearable
electronic devices.