Skip to main content
. 2026 May 15;12(20):eaee0777. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aee0777

Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of the material design of ionic biogel based on the mixing strategy—NC, BC-NP, BC-MP, BC-PP, and layered (bicontinuous system without mixing).

Fig. 1.

(A) NC mimicking LLPS forms isolated PEDOT domains, forming a stable thermodynamic system, where increasing PEDOT concentration only results in an increased number or size of isolated PEDOT domains with no charge transport. Bicontinuous system mimicking VPS forms a network-like phase morphology, where the increased PEDOT concentration (more than percolation threshold) changes the phase morphology from nonpercolating (BC-NP) to marginally percolating (BC-MP) to permanently percolating (BC-PP) to facilitate a coherent charge pathway. BC-NP shows ionically dominated charge transport like NC, whereas BC-MP and BC-PP enable electrical conductivity and semiconductivity. However, the thermoreversibility characteristics follow the opposite trend: BC-NP is thermoreversible, whereas BC-MP shows a marginal gel-sol transition and BC-PP forms a permanent scaffold. (B) The optical images of NC, BC-NP, and BC-PP showing the PEDOT phase and gelatin-phase morphology. NC follows a LLPS-inspired droplet-like morphology with a PEDOT phase correlation length of 172 μm, whereas BC-NP has 474 μm and BC-MP has around 1250 μm.