Highly flexible, self-healable and conductive poly(vinyl alcohol)/Ti3C2Tx MXene film and it’s application in capacitive deionization

Self-healing materials show great application potential in the field of flexible energy storage and wearable devices due to their special properties. Here, a self-healing material, application in Capacitive deionization for the first time is reported, which could autonomously self-healing damaged interfaces. We fabricated that hydrogel (MNH) composites incorporating MXene (Ti3C2Tx) by dynamic poly(vinylalcohol)-based network cross-linked by diol-borate ester bonding. The material fast restores its configuration, mechanical properties, and capacitive performances during after healing and shift different shape in the actual application environment transformation. The MNH electrode has good mechanical properties, self-healing efficiency is as high as 92%, the electrochemical healing properties is of 95.8%. The feasibility of its application in capacitive deionization was proved. The electrode performed a salt adsorption capacity of about 51 mg/g at a current density of 10 mA·g−1 and a voltage window of 1 V and showed excellent cyclic stability. Our work expands the application scenarios of self-healing materials and provides a promising approach for the development of capacitive deionizing electrodes with good self-healing properties and long life.