Abstract
Maintenance-free self-healing elastomers that switch their mechanical properties on demand would be extremely useful materials for improving the functionalities, safety, energy efficiency, and lifetimes of many kinds of products and devices. However, strength and stretchability are conflicting properties for elastomers because the inherent crosslinking density of a polymeric network is unchangeable. For example, heavily crosslinked elastomers are strong, but poorly stretchable. Here we report an ionically crosslinked polyisoprene elastomer in which the ionic moieties are continually hopping between ionic aggregates at room temperature. Thus, the network is dynamic. This elastomer spontaneously self-heals without the input of external energy or healing agents. Furthermore, it behaves like a strong elastic material under rapid deformation, but acts like a highly stretchable and viscoelastic material under slow deformation. Our ionic elastomer shows a variety of notable mechanical properties, including high fracture strength (≈7 MPa), good toughness (≈70 MJ m−3), and ultrastretchability (>13,400%).
Highlights
Maintenance-free self-healing elastomers that switch their mechanical properties on demand would be extremely useful materials for improving the functionalities, safety, energy efficiency, and lifetimes of many kinds of products and devices
The development of elastomers that switch their mechanical properties on demand and exhibit autonomic self-healing ability at ambient temperature may have a significant impact on the improvement of functionality, safety, energy efficiency, and lifetimes of products and devices
We present a supramolecular elastomer with dynamic ionic crosslinks
Summary
Maintenance-free self-healing elastomers that switch their mechanical properties on demand would be extremely useful materials for improving the functionalities, safety, energy efficiency, and lifetimes of many kinds of products and devices. This elastomer spontaneously self-heals without the input of external energy or healing agents. It behaves like a strong elastic material under rapid deformation, but acts like a highly stretchable and viscoelastic material under slow deformation. The development of elastomers that switch their mechanical properties on demand and exhibit autonomic self-healing ability at ambient temperature may have a significant impact on the improvement of functionality, safety, energy efficiency, and lifetimes of products and devices. In our ionically crosslinked polyisoprene (PI) elastomer, ionic moieties continuously hop between ionic aggregates at room temperature, and the hopping rate is controllable by the neutralization level. Unlike previous self-healing elastomers, the self-healing rate, stretchability, toughness, and strength of our elastomer may be tuned by altering the neutralization level
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