This study is led by Dr. Jinrong Wu (State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, College of Polymer Science and Engineering, Sichuan University). In high-speed devices, crack propagates very quickly and brings irreversible destruction. However, materials that can self-heal quickly often have poor performance. In many applications, once a crack appears, a catastrophic accident may occur if it is not repaired in time. Therefore, it is extremely important to develop fast self-healing materials without compromising their mechanical properties.
A NIR light self-healing metallosupramolecular elastomer with high mechanical properties was prepared by simply introducing pyridine-Cu coordination into a copolymer, in which the pyridine-Cu complex could absorb NIR light and convert it into heat. This intense photothermal effect endows the elastomer with the ability to heal scratches under NIR light for 2 min.
In addition, the team investigated the molecular dynamics that drives the rearrangement of the network and self-healing of the elastomer, and find that the dissociation and reconstruction of the coordination bonds can be reflected by the Raman spectrum change. Therefore, the bond-level self-healing process can be tracked by laser confocal micro-Raman spectroscopy.
This work represents a qualitative change in the development of fast-healing and high-performance metallosupramolecular elastomer. Moreover, this work also provides a method for real-time monitoring of bond-level healing kinetics.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40843-021-1963-2
Science China Materials