Issue 34, 2021

Highly tough, freezing-tolerant, healable and thermoplastic starch/poly(vinyl alcohol) organohydrogels for flexible electronic devices

Abstract

Conductive hydrogels have found large application prospects in the fabrication of flexible multifunctional electronic devices for future-generation wearable human–machine interactions. However, their inferior mechanical strength, low-temperature resistance, and non-recyclability, resulting in the waste of resources, severely hinder their application. Thus, starch bio-based hydrogels have attracted significant attention. Starch is the most abundantly available biodegradable biopolymer. However, starch bio-based hydrogels usually show low toughness, high brittleness and low anti-freezing properties. Thus, to address these issues, herein, glycerol and CaCl2 were concurrently introduced to a starch/poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) hydrogel to improve its mechanical, thermal and conductive properties. The effect of glycerol and CaCl2 on the crystallinity, mechanical, thermal and conductive properties was revealed by X-ray diffraction, tensile testing, differential scanning calorimetry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The thermoplasticity and healing properties of the starch/PVA/glycerol/CaCl2 organohydrogel was also evaluated. Due to the role of glycerol and CaCl2, the compatibility between starch and PVA improved, and thus the as-prepared organohydrogels showed favorable mechanical flexibility and demonstrated anti-freezing ability and long-term stability at ambient temperature. Besides, the abundant hydrogen bonds formed among PVA, starch, glycerol and water endowed the organohydrogels with high stretchability (>790%) and good thermoplasticity. Finally, based on the starch/PVA/glycerol/CaCl2 organohydrogel, a flexible all-solid-state supercapacitor and strain sensor were assembled and their performances were measured. The supercapacitor displayed an areal specific capacitance of 107.2 mF cm−2 at 1 mA cm−2. Moreover, the strain sensor demonstrated high sensitivity (gauge factor of 3.422) and could be directly attached to the human body to detect motion.

Graphical abstract: Highly tough, freezing-tolerant, healable and thermoplastic starch/poly(vinyl alcohol) organohydrogels for flexible electronic devices

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
22 ሜይ 2021
Accepted
06 ኦገስ 2021
First published
06 ኦገስ 2021

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2021,9, 18406-18420

Highly tough, freezing-tolerant, healable and thermoplastic starch/poly(vinyl alcohol) organohydrogels for flexible electronic devices

J. Lu, J. Gu, O. Hu, Y. Fu, D. Ye, X. Zhang, Y. Zheng, L. Hou, H. Liu and X. Jiang, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2021, 9, 18406 DOI: 10.1039/D1TA04336F

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