Ultrarobust subzero healable materials enabled by polyphenol nano-assemblies.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36781865.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-36461-9 and PMC identifier 9925762.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Bio-inspired self-healing materials hold great promise for applications in wearable electronics, artificial muscles and soft robots, etc. However, self-healing at subzero temperatures remains a great challenge because the reconstruction of interactions will experience resistance of the frozen segments. Here, we present an ultrarobust subzero healable glassy polymer by incorporating polyphenol nano-assemblies with a large number of end groups into polymerizable deep eutectic solvent elastomers. The combination of multiple dynamic bonds and rapid secondary relaxations with low activation energy barrier provides a promising method to overcome the limited self-healing ability of glassy polymers, which can rarely be achieved by conventional dynamic cross-linking. The resulted material exhibits remarkably improved adhesion force at low temperature (promotes 30 times), excellent mechanical properties (30.6 MPa) and desired subzero healing efficiencies (85.7% at -20 °C). We further demonstrated that the material also possesses reliable cryogenic strain-sensing and functional-healing ability. This work provides a viable approach to fabricate ultrarobust subzero healable glassy polymers that are applicable for winter sports wearable devices, subzero temperature-suitable robots and artificial muscles.