Highly Conductive, Ultratough, and Adhesive Eutectogels with Environmental Tolerance Enabled by Liquid Metal Composites

Eutectogels are recently emerged as promising alternatives to hydrogels owing to their good environmental stability derived from deep eutectic solvents (DES). However, construction of competent eutectogels with both high conductivity and mechanical toughness is still difficult to achieve yet highly demanded. In this work, new LMNP-PEDOT-CMC-AA (LPCA) eutectogels are prepared using acrylic acid (AA) and carboxymethylcellulose sodium (CMC) as polymeric networks, liquid metal nanoparticle-poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (LMNP-PEDOT) are added as multifunctional soft fillers. Benefiting from the compliant and conductive LMNP-PEDOT, the LPCA eutectogels exhibit high conductivity (0.224 S m-1), electromechanical coupling, stretchability (4228%) and exceptional toughness (7.278 MJ m-3). Additionally, abundant hydrogen interactions and available functional groups within eutectogels endow them excellent self-healing and adhesion on different substrates. Moreover, the LPCA eutectogels demonstrate superior environmental tolerance including anti-freezing and anti-drying, thus allowing for long-term functional reliability. These appealing characteristics enable accurate and stable tracking of human motions, as well as information delivery based on Morse code. This study opens the possibility of designing conductive and tough eutectogels enabled by LM composites.