Abstract
Electroluminescent (EL) devices have been extensively integrated into multi-functionalized electronic systems in the role of the vitally constituent light-emitting part. However, the lifetime and reliability of EL devices are often severely restricted by concomitant damage, especially when the strain exceeds the mechanical withstanding limit. We report a self-healable EL device by adopting a modified self-healable polyacrylic acid hydrogel as the electrode and a self-healable polyurethane as a phosphor host to realize the first omni-layer-healable light-emitting device. The physicochemical properties of each functionalized layer can be efficiently restored after experiencing substantial catastrophic damage. As a result, the luminescent performance of the self-healable EL devices is well recovered with a high healing efficiency (83.2% for 10 healing cycles at unfixed spots, and 57.7% for 20 healing cycles at a fixed spot). In addition, inter-device healing has also been developed to realize a conceptual “LEGO”-like assembly process at the device level for light-emitting devices. The design and realization of the self-healable EL devices may revive their performance and expand their lifetime even after undergoing a deadly cut. Our self-healable EL devices may serve as model systems for electroluminescent applications of the recently developed ionically conductive healable hydrogels and dielectric polymers.
Highlights
Electroluminescent (EL) devices have been developed as indispensable modular elements in various commercially available electronic systems, such as the backlighting source in a car control panel[1,2]
Compared with film or bulk-shaped self-healing electrodes, which are based on conductive composites for EL devices, where high transmittance, conductivity, and healability are required for conductive frameworks and supporting frameworks, hydrogel was selected for simultaneous realization of these properties[21]
The carboxyl groups on polyacrylic acid (PAA) backbones endow the hydrogel with self-healing capability via hydrogen bonding, which aims to restore these physicochemical properties of PAA hydrogel after deadly damage[18,29]
Summary
Electroluminescent (EL) devices have been developed as indispensable modular elements in various commercially available electronic systems, such as the backlighting source in a car control panel[1,2]. Driven by diverse demand for versatile systems in daily life and integrated devices, EL devices have been applied in different fields, such as bioinspired soft robotics for visual disguise and artificial skin actuators[3,4], flexible and stretchable electronics[5,6,7,8,9,10], wearable electronics[11,12], digital displays[8,10], and sensors[3,13] These exquisitely designed multifunctional EL devices benefit from the recent developments of transparent conductive materials, biological soft robotics, and optimized device configurations. The absence of a healable feature in light-emitting fields is attributed to the difficulties in designing and applying self-healable materials to each component of lightemitting devices, which should satisfy different requirements of each integrated functionalized layer and restore their physicochemical properties from damage. Due to the configuration complexity and synergy of different criteria of the physicochemical properties for each functionalized layer, designing and fabricating omnilayered self-healable EL devices are challenging
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