Aqueous secondary batteries are promising candidates for next-generation large-scale energy storage systems owing to their excellent safety and cost-effectiveness. However, their commercialization faces considerable challenges owing to a limited electrochemical stability window and lower energy density. In this study, we present a rationally designed hydrogel electrolyte, featuring a distinctive polymer network and reduced free water content, created using a UV-curing method. This innovation results in an impressive ionic conductivity of 43 mS cm⁻¹, high mechanical strength and an enhanced electrochemical stability window of up to 2.5 V (vs. Zn/Zn²⁺). The hybrid electrolyte demonstrates impressive viability and versatility, enabling compatibility with various cathode materials for use in both aqueous Na–Zn hybrid batteries and Zn-ion batteries. Notably, when paired with a Prussian blue cathode, the assembled hybrid batteries show remarkable cyclability, enduring over 6000 cycles with a minimal capacity decay of only 0.0096% per cycle at a high current density of 25 C. Additionally, the Zn||Na₂MnFe(CN)₆ full battery using the synthesized hydrogel electrolyte achieves a high energy density of approximately 220 Wh kg⁻¹ and outstanding rate performance reaching up to 5 C. This research provides important insights for designing aqueous hybrid electrolytes that combine both high ionic conductivity and an expansive electrochemical stability window.

Multifunctional intelligent fabric plays an integral role in health management, human–machine interaction, wireless energy storage and conversion, and many other artificial intelligence fields. Herein, we demonstrate a newly developed MXene/polyaniline (PANI) multifunctional fabric integrated with strain sensing, electrochemical energy storage, and electromagnetic shielding properties. The multifunctional fabric-based strain sensor possesses a real-time signal response at a sizeable tensile strain of 100% with a minute strain of 0.5%, maintaining a stable and consistent signal response even after 3000 stretch–release cycles. In addition, the multifunctional fabric exhibits excellent electromagnetic shielding capabilities, achieving a total shielding effectiveness value of up to 43 dB, and in the meantime shows attractive electrochemical energy storage performance as an electrode in a supercapacitor, offering a maximum specific capacity and energy density of 522.5 mF·cm⁻² and 18.16 μWh·cm⁻², respectively. Such a multifunctional intelligent fabric offers versatile opportunities to develop smart clothes for various artificial intelligent applications.

As a novel class of porous crystalline solids, covalent organic frameworks (COFs) based electrolyte can combine the advantages of both inorganic and polymer electrolytes, leading to such as higher structural stability to inhibit lithium dendrites and better processing facility for improving interfacial contact. However, the ionic components of Li salt tend to be closely associated in the form of ion pairs or even ionic aggregates in the channel of COFs due to strong coulombic interactions, thus resulting in slow ionic diffusion dynamics and low ionic conductivity. Herein, we successfully designed and synthesized a novel single-ion conducting nitrogen hybrid conjugated skeleton (NCS) as all solid electrolyte, whose backbone is consisted with triazine and piperazine rings. A loose bonding between the triazine rings and cations would lower the energy barrier during ions transfer, and electrostatic forces with piperazine rings could “anchor” anions to increase the selectivity during ions transfer. Thus, the NCS-electrolyte exhibits excellent room temperature lithium-ion conductivity up to 1.49 mS·cm⁻¹ and high transference number of 0.84 without employing any solvent, which to the best of our knowledge is one of the highest COF-based electrolytes so far. Moreover, the fabricated all-solid-state lithium metal batteries demonstrate highly attractive properties with quite stable cycling performance over 100 cycles with 82% capacity reservation at 0.5 C.