Tough Transient Ionic Junctions Printed with Ionic Microgels

Emerging soft ionotronics better match the human body mechanically and electrically compared to conventional rigid electronics. They hold great potential for human-machine interfaces, wearable implantable devices, machines. Among various ionotronic ionic junctions play critical roles in rectifying currents as electrical p–n junctions. Existing junctions, however, are limited mechanical performance, difficult fabricate degrade. Herein, design, fabrication, characterization of tough transient fabricated via 3D microgel printing is reported. The method demonstrates excellent printability allows one configurations with high fidelity. By combining microgels, degradable networks, highly charged biopolymers, feature stretchability (stretch limit 27), fracture energy (>1000 Jm−2), performance (current rectification ratio >100), stability (degrade 1 week). A variety including diodes, bipolar junction transistors, full-wave rectifiers, touchpads further demonstrated. This study merges ionotronics, printing, hydrogels, will motivate future development high-performance ionotronics.