Liquid metal bionic instant self-healing flexible electronics with full recyclability and high reliability

Abstract

Soft smart electronics with fast self-healing ability, complete recyclability, high reliability have attracted increasing interest. However, flexible electronics are still limited by stability under extreme impact and self-healing speed. Herein, the bio-based α-thioctic acid (TA) and butyl acrylate (BA) recycled copolymer with complete recyclability, excellent self-healing ability, and outstanding adhesion attributed to the abundant hydrogen bonds and disulfide bond was chosen as substrate material. Significantly, the performance of rapid self-healing (5 min, 60 °C) is very similar to the concept of clinic healing by first intention and the bionic idea of suture helping human wound healing. The coupling of mask and plasma treatment was used to enhance the interaction between liquid metal (LM) and substrate in a specific position and further explored the enhancement mechanism. Benefiting the excellent fluidity of liquid metal and the instantaneous bonding of damaged parts, the flexible electronic devices with real-time mechanical and conductivity self-healing performances were fabricated. The Liquid Metal-Bionic Instant Self-Healing Electronic Materials (LM-BISHEM) we developed has many applications in wearable intelligent devices, including bionic electronic skin, human-machine interaction sensor, flexible heater, and soft sensor control array. Based on the materials in this work, a classified closed-loop recycling strategy is proposed to realize the complete recycling of all components.