Tough and Ultrastretchable Liquid‐Free Ion Conductor Strengthened by Deep Eutectic Solvent Hydrolyzed Cellulose Microfibers

Abstract

Ion conductors (ICs) have gained extensive research interest in various advanced application scenarios including sensors, batteries, and supercapacitors. However, stretchable, tough, and long-term stable ICs are still hard to achieve yet highly demanded. In this study, the authors propose a one-pot green and sustainable fabrication of cellulose based ICs through polymerizable deep eutectic solvents treated cellulose followed by an in situ photo-polymerization. The obtained ICs exhibit extremely high stretchability (3210 ± 302%), high toughness (13.17 ± 2.32 MJ m −3 ), high transparency, and self-healing ability. Notably, the introduction of cellulose fibers greatly enhances the mechanical properties of ICs while eliminating the environmental concerns of traditional nanocellulose fabrication process. More importantly, the ICs possess good long-term performance stability after 1 month storage. Due to these outstanding properties, the feasibility of applying ICs in human motion sensing and physiological signal detecting is demonstrated. This simple and green method will contribute to the development of tough, self-healing, transparent, and long-term stable ICs.

Ultrastretchable Ionogel with Extreme Environmental Resilience through Controlled Hydration Interactions

“…Such factors greatly limit or prevent practical applications of ICGs. [12,13] Hence, non-aqueous liquid phases or hygroscopic salts with strong water binding capacity, such as ionic liquids (ILs), [14,15] deep eutectic solvents, [10,16] some organic, protic solvents (dimethyl sulfoxide [17] and glycerol [18] ), and inorganic salts (CaCl 2 [19] and LiCl [20] ), have been commonly incorporated into the gels to improve their environmental stability. Among these, ILs have proven to be most suitable in fabricating ICGs (generally referred as ionogels) given their low flammability, low volatility and inherit ionic conductivity.…”

Ultrastretchable, Self-Healing Conductive Hydrogel-Based Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Human–Computer Interaction

“…With the increase of tensile strain, the PTSM hydrogel cannot immediately return to the initial state, which is because the reconstruction speed of the dynamic interaction of molecules inside the hydrogel cannot meet the reconstruction speed of the double network structure. However, the PTSM hydrogel can return to the initial state after sufficient time. , …”

“…However, the PTSM hydrogel can return to the initial state after sufficient time. 33,34 As the PTSM hydrogel is rich in various weak hydrogen bonds, it has good self-healing ability. 27,35 The recovery of the tensile properties of the hydrogel when it was healed at room temperature (25 °C) for different times is shown in Figure 2f.…”

Liquid‐Free, Anti‐Freezing, Solvent‐Resistant, Cellulose‐Derived Ionic Conductive Elastomer for Stretchable Wearable Electronics and Triboelectric Nanogenerators

“…[27,28] Up to date, PDES systems have been successfully applied to fabricate cellulose-derived non-volatility flexible and stretchable conductive materials for wearable devices. [29][30][31][32] In the PDES system, the ionic salt (such as choline chloride (ChCl)) as a conductive ion endowed the materials with intrinsically ionic conductivity. [33,34] Moreover, the formation of the supramolecular hydrogen bond network between the hydrogen bond donors and acceptors could depress the eutectic point by charging delocalization and converting the solid complexed systems into the observed liquid mixture, which afford the conductive materials with anti-freezing properties.…”