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
10 شوال 1442
Accepted
27 ذو الحجة 1442
First published
27 ذو الحجة 1442

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

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements