A new self-healing polymer that is highly suitable for use as a flexible conductor in wearable devices and robots has been created by RIKEN chemists.
The work is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Electrical conductors used in conventional electronic devices tend to be brittle and inflexible. That makes them unsuitable for use in applications that involve repeated flexing, such as wearable electronics and robotics.
To solve this problem, researchers are seeking to produce robust and flexible conductors for these applications. It is highly desirable that these conductors should also be self-healing so that they can repair themselves after being damaged.
“In practical scenarios, these conductors are prone to mechanical damage from repeated deformations, which compromise their reliability and shorten their service life,” explains Zhaomin Hou of the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science. “Incorporating self-healing capabilities can effectively address these issues by restoring functionality after damage.”
A promising strategy for making such flexible conductors is to use a self-healing polymer as a flexible base and incorporate gold nanoparticles or nanosheets on it, which can conduct electricity. However, endowing polymers with self-healing and adhesive properties is not easy.
Now, Hou and his co-workers have demonstrated that modifying common polymers known as polyolefins with a sulfur-containing group (thioether) produces a self-healing polymer that can be used for flexible conductors.
