Liquid metal and Mxene enable self-healing soft electronics based on double networks of bacterial cellulose hydrogels

openaire: EC/H2020/788489/EU//BioELCell Funding Information: The authors are grateful for the financial support for this work by Guangdong Province Science Foundation ( 2017GC010429 ) and Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou ( 202002030329 ). M.W., O.J.R, L.N., X.N. and X.S. gratefully acknowledge the Canada Excellence Research Chair Program ( CERC-2018-00006 ), Canada Foundation for Innovation (Project number 38623 ) and ">H2020-ERC-2017-Advanced Grant ‘BioELCell’ ( 788489 ). Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Liquid metal (LM) nanodroplets and MXene nanosheets are integrated with sulfonated bacterial nanocellulose (BNC) and acrylic acid (AA). Upon fast sonication, AA polymerization leads to a crosslinked composite hydrogel in which BNC exfoliates Mxene, forming organized conductive pathways. Soft conducting properties are achieved in the presence of colloidally stable core-shell LM nanodroplets. Due to the unique gelation mechanism and the effect of Mxene, the hydrogels spontaneously undergo surface wrinkling, which improves their electrical sensitivity (GF = 8.09). The hydrogels are further shown to display interfacial adhesion to a variety of surfaces, ultra-elasticity (tailorable elongation, from 1000 % to 3200 %), indentation resistance and self-healing capabilities. Such properties are demonstrated in wearable, force mapping, multi-sensing and patternable electroluminescence devices.