Consecutive multimaterial printing of biomimetic ionic hydrogel power sources with high flexibility and stretchability

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 5261 - 15
• Main Authors: He, Pei, Yue, Junyu, Qiu, Zhennan, Meng, Zijie, He, Jiankang, Li, Dichen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 19.06.2024; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/166/987; 639/301/1023/1025; 639/301/299/161; 639/301/930/1032; Biomimetics; Concentration gradient; Eels; Electric contacts; Electric potential; Filaments; Flexibility; Humanities and Social Sciences; Hydrogels; multidisciplinary; Power sources; Printers (data processing); Printing; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Stretchability; Sustainable energy; Voltage; Wristwatches
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49469-6

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. Electric eels are an excellent example of harnessing ion-concentration gradient for power generation. Here, authors demonstrate an automatic and high-throughput consecutive multi-material printing strategy to fabricate electric-eel-inspired ionic hydrogel power sources with high stretchability.