Continuous Melt Spinning of Covalently Cross-Linked Self-Healing Ionogel Fibers for Multi-Functional Ionotronics.

Stretchable conductive fibers play key roles in electronic textiles, which have substantial improvements in terms of flexibility, breathability, and comfort. Compared to most existing electron-conductive fibers, ion-conductive fibers are usually soft, stretchable, and transparent, leading to increasing attention. However, the integration of desirable functions including high transparency, stretchability, conductivity, solvent resistance, self-healing ability, processability, and recyclability remains a challenge to be addressed. In the current research, we proposed a new molecular strategy based on dynamic covalent cross-linking networks to enable continuous melt spinning of the ionogel fiber with the aforementioned properties. As a proof of concept, covalently cross-linked ionogel fibers based on dimethylglyoximeurethane (DOU) groups (DOU-IG fiber) were prepared. The resultant DOU-IG fiber exhibited high transparency (> 93%), tensile strength (0.76 MPa), stretchability (784%), and solvent resistance. Owing to the dynamic of DOU groups, the DOU-IG fiber showed high healing performance using near-infrared light. Taking advantage of DOU-IG fibers, multifunctional ionotronics with the integration of several desirable functionalities including sensor, triboelectric nanogenerator, and electroluminescent display were fabricated and used for motion monitoring, energy harvesting, and human-machine interaction. It is believed that these DOU-IG fibers are promising for fabricating the next generation of electronic textiles and other wearable electronics. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.