Consecutive multimaterial printing of biomimetic ionic hydrogel power sources with high flexibility and stretchability.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38898001.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-49469-6 and PMC identifier 11187209.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Electric eel is an excellent example to harness ion-concentration gradients for sustainable power generation. However, current strategies to create electric-eel-inspired power sources commonly involve manual stacking of multiple salinity-gradient power source units, resulting in low efficiency, unstable contact, and poor flexibility. Here we propose a consecutive multimaterial printing strategy to efficiently fabricate biomimetic ionic hydrogel power sources with a maximum stretchability of 137%. The consecutively-printed ionic hydrogel power source filaments showed seamless bonding interface and can maintain stable voltage outputs for 1000 stretching cycles at 100% strain. With arrayed multi-channel printhead, power sources with a maximum voltage of 208 V can be automatically printed and assembled in parallel within 30 min. The as-printed flexible power source filaments can be woven into a wristband to power a digital wristwatch. The presented strategy provides a tool to efficiently produce electric-eel-inspired ionic hydrogel power sources with great stretchability for various flexible power source applications.