The recent use of cryoprotectant replacement method for solving the easy drying problem of hydrogels has attracted increasing research interest. However, the conductivity decrease of organohydrogels due to the induced insulating solvent limited their electronic applications. Herein, we introduce the Hofmeister effect and electrostatic interaction to generate hydrogen and sodium bonds in the hydrogel. Combined with its double network, an effective charge channel that will not be affected by the solvent replacement, is therefore built. The developed organohydrogel-based single-electrode triboelectric nanogenerator (OHS-TENG) shows low conductivity decrease (one order) and high output (1.02−1.81 W/m 2 ), which is much better than reported OHS-TENGs (2− 3 orders, 41.2−710 mW/m 2 ). Moreover, replacing water with glycerol in the hydrogel enables the device to exhibit excellent long-term stability (four months) and temperature tolerance (−50−100 °C). The presented strategy and mechanism can be extended to common organohydrogel systems aiming at high performance in electronic applications.
The emerging cryoprotectant replacement method endows hydrogels with nondrying and antifreezing properties, but the low conductivity still limits wider electronic applications. In this work, the Hofmeister effect and electrostatic interaction are introduced to improve the conductivity of organohydrogels and their enhancement mechanism are studied in depth. The Hofmeister effect mainly influences the physical properties, such as the pore structure and mechanical strength, which subsequently impacts ion transfer during the solvent replacement process. The lithium and sodium bonds formed by the electrostatic interaction play a more important role in the conductivity of organohydrogels and an overall picture is presented based on the synergistic enhancement of the Hofmeister effect and electrostatic interaction to achieve highly ionic conductive organohydrogels. The champion organohydrogels are applied as soft ionic conductors and antireflective layers in triboelectric, photovoltaic, and thermoelectric applications. The proposed mechanism advances the understanding of the contribution of ions to organohydrogels for wearable electronics.
A novel solvent-free route is developed to synthesize a series of highly ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs) and functionalized OMCs from solid raw materials.
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