Both self-healable conductors and stretchable conductors have been previously reported. However, it is still difficult to simultaneously achieve high stretchability, high conductivity, and self-healability. Here, we observed an intriguing phenomenon, termed “electrical self-boosting”, which enables reconstructing of electrically percolative pathways in an ultrastretchable and self-healable nanocomposite conductor (over 1700% strain). The autonomously reconstructed percolative pathways were directly verified by using microcomputed tomography and in situ scanning electron microscopy. The encapsulated nanocomposite conductor shows exceptional conductivity (average value: 2578 S cm–1; highest value: 3086 S cm–1) at 3500% tensile strain by virtue of efficient strain energy dissipation of the self-healing polymer and self-alignment and rearrangement of silver flakes surrounded by spontaneously formed silver nanoparticles and their self-assembly in the strained self-healing polymer matrix. In addition, the conductor maintains high conductivity and stretchability even after recovered from a complete cut. Besides, a design of double-layered conductor enabled by the self-bonding assembly allowed a conducting interface to be located on the neutral mechanical plane, showing extremely durable operations in a cyclic stretching test. Finally, we successfully demonstrated that electromyogram signals can be monitored by our self-healable interconnects. Such information was transmitted to a prosthetic robot to control various hand motions for robust interactive human-robot interfaces.

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Resistive strain sensors (RSS) with ultrasensitivity have attracted much attention as multifunctional sensors. However, since most ultrasensitive RSS are designed by cracked conductive metals, the sensing performance is severely degraded due to accumulated structural deformation with consecutive cycles. To overcome such limitation, newly designed structures have been suggested, but the development of mechanosensors exhibiting superior stability and ultrasensitivity still remains a challenge. Here, we demonstrate that vertical graphene (VG) RSS with high sensitivity (gauge factor greater than 5000), remarkable durability (>10,000 cycles), and extraordinary resilience can serve multifunctional applications. We find that well-defined cracks on tufted network structure result in highly reversible resistance variation, especially revivable status even after broken current path, confirmed by microscopic in situ monitoring. The VG integrated with a wireless sensing system exhibits excellent timbre recognition performance. Our findings provide inspirable insights for mechanosensing system, making VG a promising component for future practicable flexible sensor technologies.

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