High-resilience, anti-freezing, and vacuum-tolerant eutectogel for self-powered pressure sensing in extreme environments
Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) offer promising solutions for self-powered sensors in the Internet of Things, yet traditional materials suffer from limited mechanical durability, environmental stability, and sensing performance under extreme conditions. This study develops a novel eutectogel composed of a deep eutectic solvent (DES) and a poly(itaconic acid-co-2-hydroxyethyl acrylate) (P(IA-co-HEA)) polymer network. Through careful molecular design and microstructural modification, the eutectogel achieves low hysteresis, excellent resilience (97.8%), high conductivity (48.02 mS m−1), and strong adhesive strength. Benefiting from the low freezing point and low volatility of the DES, the eutectogel retains 75.7% tensile and 69.4% compressive resilience at −40 °C, and shows no significant change in resilience after 24 h storage under −0.1 MPa vacuum. A self-powered TENG pressure sensor incorporating the eutectogel exhibits a fast response time of 16 ms and stable signal output over 16,000 contact-separation cycles. The sensor operates reliably at −60 °C and under vacuum (−0.1 MPa). These attributes make the high-resilience flexible sensor suitable for long-term, reliable pressure monitoring in extreme environments, addressing critical bottlenecks in durability and environmental stability for self-powered sensing technologies.