Highly transparent, self-healing conductive elastomers enabled by synergistic hydrogen bonding interactions

Abstract

• Highly transparent, self-healing conductive elastomers were prepared. • Synergistic H-bonding interactions were employed for the self-healing mechanism. • Poly(PDES)-PA elastomers were used to monitor the human activities. It is attractive, though it is very challenging, to synthesize conductive elastomers with high transparency and self-healing ability, simultaneously with facile and environmentally friendly preparation process. Here we demonstrate the fabrication of highly transparent, self-healing conductive elastomers based on synergistic hydrogen bonding interactions between poly(polymerizable deep eutectic solvent) (poly(PDES)) and phytic acid (PA) molecules. The hybrid network elastomers showed a fast self-healing property (within 2 s) without any other external stimuli and excellent self-healing efficiency (91.5%) within 48 h. The poly(PDES)-PA elastomers were highly transparent (an average transmittance of 93%), intrinsically conductive (an ionic conductivity of 7.8 × 10 −4 S cm −1 ) and stretchable (strains up to 1300%). Furthermore, the abilities of healable & conductive poly(PDES)-PA elastomers to monitor the human activities retained no matter before or after being damaged. We believe this kind of dynamic bond manipulation is a powerful strategy to design and synthesize various transparent, self-healing, conductive elastomers for versatile applications.