Degradable Conductive Plastics with Liquid Metal-Vitrimer Composites

The rapid development and growing use of electronic devices in the modern era has exacerbated the issue of electronic waste (E-waste). Here we report an epoxy vitrimer-based composite with microdroplets of a Ga-In based liquid metal (LM) alloy that exhibits high electrical conductivity and glass transition temperature coupled with shape memory behavior, reconfigurability, and degradability. The as synthesized vitrimer exhibits a fast relaxation time (0.1 s) and a high tensile strength (>2 GPa). The electrically conductive composite exhibits low electrical resistivity (10^-4) with LM volume loading as low as 5 vol%. Furthermore, the covalent adaptive network enables efficient deconstruction of the composite to recover the LM and precious components from electronic devices.