Three-Dimensional Graphene Structure for Healable Flexible Electronics Based on Diels-Alder Chemistry

Wearable electronics with excellent stretchability and sensitivity have emerged as a very promising field with wide applications such as e-skin and human motion detection. Although three-dimensional (3D) graphene structures (GS) have been reported for high-performance strain sensors, challenges still remain such as the high cost of GS preparation, low stretchability, and the lack of ability to heal itself. In this paper, we reported a novel self-healing flexible electronics with 3D GS based on Diels-Alder (DA) chemistry. Furfurylamine (FA) was employed as a reducing as well as a modifying agent, forming GS by FA (FAGS)/DA bonds contained polyurethane with the infiltrate-gel-dry process. The as-prepared composite exhibited excellent stretchability (200%) and intrinsic conductivity with low incorporation of graphene (about 2 wt %), which could be directly employed for flexible electronics to detect human motions. Besides, the FAGS/DAPU composite exhibited lower temperature retro-DA response for the continuous graphene networks. Highly effective healing of the composites by heat and microwave has been demonstrated successfully.