All-Solid-State Self-Healing Ionic Conductors Enabled by Ion–Dipole Interactions within Fluorinated Poly(Ionic Liquid) Copolymers

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces 2021-09, Vol.13 (34), p.41140-41148
• Main Authors: Ming, Xiaoqing, Du, Jiaying, Zhang, Changgeng, Zhou, Miaomiao, Cheng, Guijuan, Zhu, He, Zhang, Qi, Zhu, Shiping
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applications of Polymer, Composite, and Coating Materials
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c12880

Self-healing ionic conductors in all solid state without evaporation or leakage offers great potential for the next-generation soft ionotronics. However, it remains challenging to endow ionic conductors with all solid state while keeping their essential features. In this study, an intrinsically conducting polymer is developed as all-solid-state self-healing ionic conductors based on ion–dipole interactions within a fluorinated poly­(ionic liquid) copolymer. This unique material possesses good self-healing ability at room temperature (96% of healing efficiency in 24 h), large strain (1800%), optical transparency (96%), and ionic conductivity (1.62 × 10–6 S/cm). The self-healing polymer itself is intrinsically conductive without any additives or fillers, thus it is almost free of evaporation or leaking issues of traditional conducting gels. An alternating-current electroluminescent device with self-healing performance is demonstrated. It is anticipated that this strategy would provide new opportunities for the development of novel self-healing ionotronics.