Sustainable Poly Thioctic Acid‐Based Elastomer for Super‐Stretchable Electronic Sensors

Abstract Stretchable sensors have attracted an increasing interests in electronic skin, motion monitoring, medical care, and human‐computer interaction. The traditional polymer‐based elastomers possess excellent mechanical properties, however, are non‐recyclable and difficult‐to‐degrade. Poly(thioctic acid) (PTA) offers recyclability through reversible disulfide bond polymerization, its poor resilience and conductivity limit practical applications. Herein, the synthesis of a recyclable polysulfide network has been pioneered with super‐stretchability, remarkable resilience, electrical stability, and self‐healing ability through molecular structure design. By modifying the thioctic acid (TA) repeating units with cationic chains to obtain cationic thioctic acid (C 15 H 25 N 2 O 2 S 2 Br, TAB), and subsequently co‐polymerizing it with PTA, the recyclable and super‐stretchable Poly(TA‐ co ‐TAB) are generated with high resilience and electronic stability. The resulting material achieves tunable stretchability (360–1700%), high sensitivity (GF = 16.2), fast response/recovery (117/108 ms), and stability (>1500 cycles at 100% strain). Notably, the material can be fully recycled via a simple alkaline dissolution‐acid extraction process, showcasing its environmental sustainability.