Self-healing polymer material as a smart material can repair cracks or local damage caused by external force during use, thereby restoring its original function and prolonging its service life. The material is protected on the surface coating, biomedicine Materials, lithium batteries and aerospace applications have potential applications. To meet different applications, researchers have introduced 'sacrificial bonds' into polymer materials and developed self-healing plastics, gels or elastomers. For elastomeric materials, good mechanical properties, efficient self-repairing efficiency and excellent optical performance are challenging challenges. With the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the researcher of the Key Laboratory of Engineering Plastics, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences Xia and others are committed to the development and application of smart materials, and have made a series of progress. On this basis, from the perspective of molecular design, a new self-repair design strategy 'Phase Locked Dynamic Chemical Bonds' is proposed. Successfully prepared high-toughness and high-strength polymer which is colorless and transparent and can be self-repairing quickly.
The research work is carried out through a combination of 'hard segment locking' and 'microphase separation control'. The designed disulfide-containing self-healing polyurethane elastomer (PUDS) exhibits excellent optical properties of colorless and transparent, and the maximum tensile strength can be Up to 25 MPa, elongation at break exceeds 1600%. Under mild heating conditions (70oC), the scratch on the surface of the elastomer can be quickly recovered within 60s, and it exhibits good repeated scratch self-repair function. The self-healing material has a haze value of only 0.6%. This colorless, highly transparent self-healing feature makes this material an important application prospect in the field of optics. Related results were published in Advanced Materials.