- He, Peisheng;
- Long, Yu;
- Fang, Chao;
- Ahn, Christine Heera;
- Lee, Ashley;
- Chen, Chun-Ming;
- Park, Jong Ha;
- Wang, Monong;
- Ghosh, Sujoy Kumar;
- Qiu, Wenying;
- Guo, Ruiqi;
- Xu, Renxiao;
- Shao, Zhichun;
- Peng, Yande;
- Zhang, Likun;
- Mi, Baoxia;
- Zhong, Junwen;
- Lin, Liwei
Dehydration has been a key limiting factor for the operation of conductive hydrogels in practical application. Here, we report self-healable ionic skins that can self-regulate their internal moisture level by capturing extenral moistures via hygroscopic ion-coordinated polymer backbones through antipolyelectrolyte effect. Results show the ionic skin can maintain its mechanical and electrical functions over 16 months in the ambient environment with high stretchability (fracture stretch ∼2216 %) and conductivity (23.5 mS/cm). The moisture self-regulating capability is further demonstrated by repeated exposures to harsh environments such as 200°C heating, freezing, and vacuum drying with recovered conductivity and stretchability. Their reversible ionic and hydrogen bonds also enable self-healing feature as a sample with the fully cut-through damage can restore its conductivity after 24 h at 40 % relative humidity. Utilizing the ionic skin as a building block, self-healing flexible piezoelecret sensors have been constructed to monitor physiological signals. Together with a facile transfer-printing process, a self-powered sensing system with a self-healable supercapacitor and humidity sensor has been successfully demonstrated. These results illustrate broad-ranging possibilities for the ionic skins in applications such as energy storage, wearable sensors, and human-machine interfaces.