ABSTRACT Electrolyte leakage poses an urgent safety challenge to the development of the energy industry, and real‐time monitoring of such leakage enables early mitigation of potential hazards, including thermal runaway, fires, and battery explosions. Herein, a concept of “organic‐inorganic ion co‐conduction” was proposed to guide the in situ synthesis of porous organic‐inorganic hybrid ionic conductors on electrodes via a modular interface‐confined route, which enabled the simultaneous incorporation of “soft” ionic liquids and “hard” metal‐organic frameworks into a tailored porous conductive polymer substrate. Leveraging the abundant porosity and efficient ionic conductivity, the developed sensors exhibited excellent selectivity toward representative ether‐based and carbonate‐based electrolytes, demonstrating low detectable concentration, rapid response‐recovery time (2/3 s), low operating voltage (10 mV), and exceptional operational stability (>3 months). Interestingly, the sensor could detect a trace volume of commercial electrolytes (10 nL) within seconds and retained stable performance after 1000 bending cycles. Furthermore, it was integrated into a portable module that wirelessly transmits detection data to smartphones via Bluetooth. Density functional theory calculations further revealed that the unique sensing response arose from strong dual‐site ion‐dipole interactions. It offers a promising platform for early electrolyte leakage warning and other safety‐critical applications in next‐generation battery systems.
Wei et al. (Tue,) studied this question.