Autonomous Self-Healing of Highly Stretchable Supercapacitors at All Climates.

Abstract

Realizing autonomous self-healing and high stretchability of flexible supercapacitors over a wide temperature range remains a big challenge because of simultaneous incorporation of self-healing, stretchable and temperature-tolerant elements into a device as well as unfavorable electrochemical kinetics in harsh conditions. Here, we demonstrate for the first time an autonomous self-healing and intrinsically stretchable supercapacitor that can work at all-climate environments assembled by universally self-healing and highly stretchable organohydrogel electrodes with record-high temperature-invariant conductivity of ∼965 S/cm. Benefiting from multiple hydrogen bonding and dynamic metal coordination combined with electrochemistry-favorable components and integrated device configuration, the supercapacitor exhibits outstanding long-term stability, high stretchability, instantaneous and complete capacitive self-healability, and real-time mechanical healing at harsh temperatures from -35 to 80 °C. The superiorities in stretchability, self-healability, and all-climate tolerance enable the supercapacitor presented here as the best performer among the flexible supercapacitors reported to date.