Recyclable, thermally conductive, self-healing, and strong adhesive elastomer composite based on multiple hydrogen-bonded interactions

Abstract

Advances in next-generation soft electronic devices, soft robotics, and biomedical devices rely on developing highly deformable, self-healable, adhesion, and thermally conductive elastomers or their composites. However, multifunctional composite elastomers that simultaneously possess these properties remain a daunting challenge. Here, we report a poly (thioctic acid)/aluminum composite elastomers to solve this problem based on multiple hydrogen-bonded interactions. The multiple hydrogen bonds provide the poly (thioctic acid)/aluminum composite elastomers with enhanced adhesion and a stretchable covalent adaptive network, leading to excellent extensibility (331 %), high adhesion energy (1327 J/m2), and excellent self-healing efficiency (93 %). The presence of aluminum fillers ensures enhanced thermal conductivity (1.73 W/(m·K)) of the composite elastomers. This work shows a promising approach to the design of functional composite elastomers for next-generation soft electronic devices.