Recent Advances in Conductive Rubber Composites: Progress, Challenges, and Emerging Opportunities

Rubber materials, with finely tunable chain structures and crosslinked networks, exhibit outstanding flexibility, strength, stability, and versatile functions. These attractive features enable their wide-range use from household goods to high-performance industrial products. With the rise of flexible electronic devices, conductive and flexible rubbers are receiving tremendous attention since they simultaneously possess excellent flexibility and conductivity. In this manuscript, we aim to review the recent advances in conductive rubber composites, covering material selection, conductive mechanisms, interfacial engineering, processing techniques, vulcanization strategies, and applications. Current challenges, including filler dispersion, large-scale production, conductivity stability, and environmental concerns, are critically discussed, along with emerging directions such as self-healing conductive rubbers, sustainable bioderived filler-based systems, and superhydrophobic properties. The integration of innovative material design with scalable, low-cost, and eco-friendly manufacturing is expected to promote the future development of conductive and flexible rubbers.