Photo-patternable Elastic Polymer Network Electrolyte for Highly Integrated Deformable Iontronics

Abstract

Research on elastic polymer electrolyte have gained much attention due to availability to various form factor and excellent electrochemical characteristics. Polymer electrolyte requires integration capabilities to grant a variety of functionality of electronics. Nevertheless, highly integrated iontronics based on elastic polymer electrolyte are challenging due to absence of advanced pattern technology. Herein, we demonstrate a novel photo-patternable elastic polymer network electrolyte (elastic-PNE), which is composed of thermoplastic polyurethane with ionic liquids and ethylene oxide (EO) based azide (-N3) photo-crosslinker. The elastic-PNE retain their electrochemical characteristics even after dipping in solvent. This is coming from the ion compatibility and superior chain flexibility of EO structure. In addition, mechanical deformation of elastic-PNE film can be tolerated by effective energy dissipation through the release of hydrogen bonding between the amine group (-NH) and the EO chains. Moreover, they have a potential to overcome the limitation of scalability in deformable polymer electrolyte since the electrolyte can achieve high-resolution pattern. We expect that our system will contribute greatly to the development of iontronics, which requires high integration.