Issue 3, 2016 - Tsinghua University has developed a high-strength and high-tensile hydrogel material

Tsinghua University has developed high-strength and high-tensile hydrogel materials Tsinghua University recently released news that Xie Xuming's research group of the Department of Chemical Engineering of the university has made important progress
in the research of ultra-strong and high-tensile hydrogel materials
.
Recently, the research group and the City University of Hong Kong have collaborated to use the gel as a solid electrolyte to prepare self-healing, highly tensile flexible supercapacitors
.

After years of thinking and practice, Xie Xuming's research group proposed a new method for preparing high-strength hydrogels with the help of nanomaterials: using nanobrushes as gel factors, a single-network nanocomposite physical hydrogel
with multi-level cross-linking points was constructed concisely in one step.
Since the energy is dissipated by successive destruction of different levels of cross-linking bonds in the gel under the action of stretching, the subsequent recombination of reversible physical bonds will lead to network homogenization, making its tensile strength tens to hundreds of times that of conventional chemically crosslinked hydrogels, stretching up to 40 times, and can be repaired
in contact in its natural state after cutting.

The newly prepared flexible supercapacitor can stretch 6 times and fully recover after unloading; And the re-docking after cutting off can be completely self-repairing, and the performance can be completely maintained
.
This flexible device has important potential applications
as electronic wearables and electronic skins.