Engineering Ionic Dough with a Deep Eutectic Solvent: From a Traditional Dough Figurine to Flexible Electronics

Abstract

Conductive ionogels had demonstrated significant prospects in the field of flexible electronics. Nonetheless, it remains a big challenge to develop ionogels, by using degradable and recyclable components, with multiple functional properties. Herein, inspired by a traditional dough figurine, a novel type of ionic dough assembled from flour, water, and choline chloride/glycerol deep eutectic solvent was engineered to replace non-recyclable and non-degradable components of present ionogels. The obtained ionic dough exhibited superior conductive performance (conductivity of 3.7 mS·cm–1), long-lasting moisture retention (80% weight retention after 24 days), reliable self-healing ability (the healing efficiency was up to 95%), and excellent antibacterial and biodegradable (entirely degraded within 30 days) properties. Wearable strain sensors based on the ionic dough can accurately detect both large and subtle human activities with high strain sensitivity (gauge factor = 6.2) and durable stability under a wide working temperature range (−20 to 80 °C). Notably, the ionic dough can be further applied in green batteries and luminescent display screens of electroluminescent devices. Therefore, it was envisioned that the effective and innovative design strategy for fabricating conductive ionogels, using natural flour components, with multiple functionalities would provide wide applications of flexible wearable devices