A Versatile Microporous Design toward Toughened yet Softened Self‐Healing Materials
Realizing the full potential of self-healing materials in stretchable electronics necessitates not only low modulus to enable high adaptivity, but also high toughness to resist crack propagation. However, existing toughening strategies for soft self-healing materials have only modestly improves mechanical dissipation near the crack tip (Г<sub>D</sub>), and invariably compromise the material's inherent softness and autonomous healing capabilities. Here, a synthetic microporous architecture is demonstrated that unprecedently toughens and softens self-healing materials without impacting their intrinsic self-healing kinetics. This microporous structure spreads energy dissipation across the entire material through a bran-new dissipative mode of adaptable crack movement (Г<sub>A</sub>), which substantially increases the fracture toughness by 31.6 times, from 3.19 to 100.86 kJ m<sup>-2</sup>, and the fractocohesive length by 20.7 times, from 0.59 mm to 12.24 mm. This combination of unprecedented fracture toughness (100.86 kJ m<sup>-2</sup>) and centimeter-scale fractocohesive length (1.23 cm) surpasses all previous records for synthetic soft self-healing materials and even exceeds those of light alloys. Coupled with significantly enhanced softness (0.43 MPa) and nearly perfect autonomous self-healing efficiency (≈100%), this robust material is ideal for constructing durable kirigami electronics for wearable devices.
Authors
- Bowen Yao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0750-9523)
- Jian‐Hua Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8814-6108)
- Yunlong Gao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8857-0259)
- Fuyao Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6029-7844)
- Jingyi Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0622-8279)
- Lin Wang
- Tong Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3011-4070)
- Jiajun Fu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8542-9556)
- Hai Yao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7817-3485)
- Hanting Meng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-0112-8887)
- Yuandalei Cao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9826-0019)
Institutions
- Nanjing University of Science and Technology (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Advanced Materials
- Published
- 2024-10-25
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202410650
- Citations
- 70
- Primary Topic
- Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 12.91
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- National Key Research and Development Program of China
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities