Rapid Radiation Synthesis of a Flexible, Self-Healing, and Adhesive Ionogel with Environmental Tolerance for...

Ionogels are increasingly used in flexible strain sensors, but it is still challenging to incorporate multifunctional properties such as flexibility, self-healing, adhesion, temperature resistance, and electrical conductivity. Herein, a facile and rapid one-step photoinitiated polymerization strategy is employed to prepare multifunctional ionogels by filling a hydrophobic and conductive ionic liquid into a flexible, hydrophobic fluoropolymer matrix. Thanks to the presence of abundant noncovalent interactions (hydrogen-bonding and ion-dipole interactions), the ionogels exhibit high transparency, excellent mechanical properties, self-healing ability, and adhesion. Moreover, rich C-F bonds in the fluoropolymer matrix can eliminate the interference of water molecules, resulting in excellent environmental tolerance such as high and low temperature resistance, waterproofness, and anticorrosion. Furthermore, the ionogel-based wearable strain sensor can sensitively detect and differentiate human movements and subtle muscle movements and serve as a Morse code signal transmitter for information transmission. The presented work provides an effective method to develop versatile flexible conductive ionogels for wearable devices and ionotronics.