Petroleum-based conductive hydrogels have high flexibility, adjustable mechanical properties and excellent electrochemical properties, and have broad application prospects in flexible electronic equipment and other fields, but their poor biodegradability has brought great harm to the ecological environment. Cellulose has the advantages of renewable, non-toxic and degradable, and is an ideal material for the preparation of ionic conductive hydrogels. However, the introduction of inorganic conductive ions will destroy the hydrogen bond network structure between cellulose molecules, resulting in serious attenuation of the mechanical properties of cellulose hydrogels.  So far, it remains a great challenge to develop cellulose hydrogels with combined advantages of high ionic conductivity and mechanical strength.

Based on the supramolecular chemical strategy, the research team of Chen group and He Liu’s team of the Institute of Forestry and Chemical Research, Chinese Academy of Forestry construct a cellulose-bentonite supramolecular hydrogel with high strength, high ionic conductivity and excellent low temperature resistance. The findings were published online in the journal Nature Communications under the title "Strong, tough, ionic conductive, and freezing-tolerant all-natural hydrogel enabled by cellulose-bentonite coordination interactions."

Paper Link：https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30224-8