A Self-Healing Conductive Elastomer Based on a Polymerizable Deep Eutectic Solvent.

Conductive elastomers are extensively used in electronics; however, they are prone to mechanical damage, have shortened service life, and cause environmental pollution and resource waste under the influence of external factors. Therefore, conductive elastomers with rapid self-healing properties are crucial for solving these problems. To that end, a conductive elastomer based on a polymerizable deep eutectic solvent as the matrix is developed in this study. The contents of certain small molecules and conductive particles are adjusted to yield a conductive elastomer with excellent comprehensive performance. The elastomer exhibited noteworthy fracture strength (15.7 MPa), ultrahigh fracture elongation (2400%), excellent light transmittance (95.6%), and remarkable self-healing characteristics, with complete electrical healing achieved within 0.6 s, ≈63% strain, and ≈64% stress recovered within 1 min, and healing efficiency close to 99% realized within 24 h. By leveraging these properties, the elastomer is used to construct a sensor that exhibited a gauge factor of ≈0.574 in the strain range 0-2400% and excellent stability. Moreover, the CCK-8 toxicity test and fluorescence staining experiment have demonstrated that conductive elastomers have excellent cell compatibility and also have excellent potential in the field of biomedicine. In particular, the sensor is effectively applied in human motion detection, health monitoring.

Vitrimeric silicone composite with high thermal conductivity and high repairing efficiency as thermal interface materials.

Thermally conductive composites with self-healing ability can not only solve the heat dissipation problem of integrated electronic devices but also help improve their service life, thereby reducing electronic waste. In this study, a self-repairing thermally conductive composite with good electrical insulation, high thermal conductivity, high healing efficiency, and excellent mechanical strength was designed and prepared using a silicon vitrimer as the matrix and functionalized boron nitride nanosheets (fBNNS) as the thermally conductive filler. The tensile strength of the vitrimers with 10 wt% of octaglycidyl polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) increased by 2.82 times to 8.4 ± 0.1 MPa with respect to that without POSS. In addition, the composites exhibited excellent thermal conductivity of 1.41 ± 0.05 W/mK with 66 wt% of fBNNS, which is more than 6 times higher than that of undoped elastomers. More importantly, the repair efficiency of undoped vitrimeric silicone can be as high as 98.8 ± 1.1%, which was slightly reduced to over 92.0% by adding 66 wt% of fBNNS. Further, it could recover 99.3% of the thermal conductivity even after 6 healing cycles. The self-healing thermally conductive composites exhibited excellent wettability and good adhesion to different wafers and substrates, demonstrating excellent performance as thermal interface materials for high-power electronic devices.