Zhang Jipeng, Zhang Miaoqian, Wan Huixiong, Zhou Jinping, Lu Ang
College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, People's Republic of China.
Nat Commun. 2025 Jan 2;16(1):320. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-55245-3.
Polymer gels have been widely used in flexible electronics, soft machines and impact protection materials. Conventional gels usually suffer from the inherent conflict between stiffness and toughness, severely hampering their applications. This work proposes a facile yet versatile strategy to break through this trade-off via the synergistic effect of crystal-domain cross-linking and chelation cross-linking, without the need for specific structure design or adding other reinforcements. Both effects are proven to boost the mechanical performance of the originally weak gel, and result in a stiff and tough conductive gel, achieving significant enhancements in elastic modulus and toughness by up to 366-, and 104-folds, respectively. The resultant gel achieves coordinatively enhanced stiffness (110.26 MPa) and toughness (219.93 MJ m), reconciling the challenging trade-off between them. In addition, the presented strategy is found generalizable to a variety of metal ions and polymers, offering a promising way to expand the applicability of gels.
聚合物凝胶已广泛应用于柔性电子器件、软机器和抗冲击保护材料中。传统凝胶通常在刚度和韧性之间存在内在冲突，严重阻碍了它们的应用。这项工作提出了一种简便而通用的策略，通过晶域交联和螯合交联的协同作用来突破这种权衡，而无需特定的结构设计或添加其他增强剂。事实证明，这两种作用都能提高原本较弱凝胶的机械性能，从而得到一种坚硬且坚韧的导电凝胶，其弹性模量和韧性分别显著提高了366倍和104倍。所得凝胶实现了刚度（110.26MPa）和韧性（219.93MJ/m）的协同增强，调和了它们之间具有挑战性的权衡关系。此外，该策略被发现可推广到多种金属离子和聚合物，为扩大凝胶的适用性提供了一条有前景的途径。
