Quadruple H-Bonding and Polyrotaxanes Dual Cross-linking Supramolecular Elastomer for High Toughness and Self-healing Conductors

Q Jin and RC Du and H Tang and Y Zhao and WS Peng and YY Li and J Zhang and TS Zhu and XX Huang and DS Kong and YC He and TW Bao and DS Kong and XL Wang and R Wang and QH Zhang and XD Jia, ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE- INTERNATIONAL EDITION, 62 (2023).

DOI: 10.1002/anie.202305282

Tough and self-healable substrates can enable stretchable electronics long service life. However, for substrates, it still remains a challenge to achieve both high toughness and autonomous self-healing ability at room temperature. Herein, a strategy by using the combined effects between quadruple H-bonding and slidable cross-links is proposed to solve the above issues in the elastomer. The elastomer exhibits high toughness (77.3 MJ m(-3)), fracture energy (approximate to 127.2 kJ m(-2)), and good healing efficiency (91 %) at room temperature. The superior performance is ascribed to the inter and intra crosslinking structures of quadruple H-bonding and polyrotaxanes in the dual crosslinking system. Strain-induced crystallization of PEG in polyrotaxanes also contributes to the high fracture energy of the elastomers. Furthermore, based on the dual cross-linked supramolecular elastomer, a highly stretchable and self-healable electrode containing liquid metal is also fabricated, retaining resistance stability (0.16-0.26 omega) even at the strain of 1600 %.

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