Room-Temperature Aldol Condensation for n-Type Elastic-Plastic Organic Mixed Ionic-Electronic Conductors
The emergence of bioinspired electronics highlights the organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors (OMIECs) as key materials for mimicking biological systems. However, their practical deployment is hindered by an unsustainable synthesis, structural defects, and poor mechanical resilience. Here, we present a room-temperature, metal-free aldol condensation catalyzed by triethylamine, using a flexible linker embedding engineering (FLEE) strategy to synthesize a new class of n-type OMIECs with broad substrate compatibility. This approach yields defect-reduced, biocompatible OMIECs by integrating rigid conjugated backbones with soft oligoethylene glycol (OEG) linkers. The resulting materials bridge small-molecule crystallinity with polymerlike elasticity, suggesting an improved balance between crystallinity and mechanical compliance. They represent the first n-type elastic-plastic OMIECs, maintaining high performance in organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) and synaptic transistors (OESTs) and enabling stable synaptic plasticity and mechanical flexibility for neuromorphic computing. Our work establishes a sustainable platform for next-generation wearable bioinspired electronics.
Authors
- Dongsheng Yu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2176-9308)
- Xiuyuan Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5975-5561)
- Yiming Wang
- Huiqing Hou
- Wan Yue (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4170-8614)
- Jiaqi He
- Yuze Lin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0325-3842)
- Du Cheng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5105-7777)
- Riping Liu
- Zhengke Li
Institutions
- Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (CN)
- Sun Yat-sen University (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (CN)
- Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- ACS Macro Letters
- Published
- 2026-05-08
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acsmacrolett.6c00210
- Primary Topic
- Conducting polymers and applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- National Key Research and Development Program of China