Innovating ionic liquids as repairable electronics for liquid robots

摘要

When I read the paper of “Crystal-Confined Freestanding Ionic Liquids for Reconfigurable and Repairable Electronics” that was published on Nature Communications (Nat. Commun. 2019, 10, 547), I felt excited as it led to a new application of ionic liquids in addition to the enormous studies on chemical synthesis, catalysis, gas adsorption, processing biomass, and electrochemistry. This paper intended to mimic the liquid robot which was a classic character in the famous movie of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The authors successfully exploited an approach to overcome the leakage problem of ionic liquids in the absence of encapsulation layers. It seems that ionic liquids would be one of the promising materials for green electronics with less production of electronic waste. In these regards, I would be delighted to write a highlight for this innovative work and hopefully it may raise more interests in the areas of ionic liquids.