No abstract

Soft ionic conductors show great promise in multifunctional iontronic devices, but currently utilized gel materials suffer from liquid leakage or evaporation issues. Here, a dry ion‐conducting elastomer with dynamic crosslinking structures is reported. The dynamic crosslinking structures endow it with combined advantageous properties simultaneously, including high ionic conductivity (2.04 × 10−4 S cm−1 at 25 °C), self‐healing capability (96% healing efficiency), stretchability (563%), and transparency (78%). With this ionic conductor as the electrode, two soft iontronic devices (electroluminescent devices and triboelectric nanogenerator tactile sensors) are realized with entirely self‐healing and stretchable capabilities. Due to the absence of liquid materials, the dry ion‐conducting elastomer shows wide operational temperature range, and the iontronic devices achieve excellent stability. These findings provide a promising strategy to achieve highly conductive and multifunctional soft dry ionic conductors, and demonstrate their great potential in soft iontronics or electronics.

The development of stretchable/soft electronics requires power sources that can match their stretchability. In this study, a highly stretchable, transparent, and environmentally stable triboelectric nanogenerator with ionic conductor electrodes (iTENG) is reported. The ion-conducting elastomer (ICE) electrode, together with a dielectric elastomer electrification layer, allows the ICE-iTENG to achieve a stretchability of 1036% and transmittance of 91.5%. Most importantly, the ICE is liquid solvent-free and thermally stable up to 335 °C, avoiding the dehydration-induced performance degradation of commonly used hydrogels. The ICE-iTENG shows no decrease in electrical output even after storing at 100 °C for 15 h. Biomechanical motion energies are demonstrated to be harvested by the ICE-iTENG for powering wearable electronics intermittently without extra power sources. An ICE-iTENGbased pressure sensor is also developed with sensitivity up to 2.87 kPa −1 . The stretchable ICE-iTENG overcomes the strain-induced performance degradation using percolated electrical conductors and liquid evaporationinduced degradation using ion-conducting hydrogels/ionogels, suggesting great promising applications in soft/stretchable electronics under a relatively wider temperature range.