A recyclable, adhesive and fast self-healable ionic conducting elastomer based on a poly-zwitterionic liquid for soft iontronics

Abstract

Developing recyclable soft electrodes for iontronics is extremely urgent to avoid resource wastage and environment pollution. Herein, we report a recyclable, adhesive and fast self-healable ionic conducting elastomer (ICE) based on a single component poly-zwitterionic liquid (PZIL). This PZIL exhibits excellent mechanical performance (breaking strength of 0.35 MPa at 660% strain), good ionic conductivity (3.1 × 10⁻⁴ S cm⁻¹ at 25 °C), high transparency (up to 92%), a fast self-healing rate (high self-healing efficiency of 93% within 5 min at 60 °C), strong adhesion (adhesive strength of 160 kPa with Cu) and impressive recyclability. Moreover, by sandwiching this PZIL and thermoplastic polyurethane together, an entirely recyclable soft iontronic device based on the triboelectric mechanism is obtained and shows no performance loss after 3 times of recycling. This soft iontronic device shows great application prospects as a tactile sensor in human–machine interactions.