Self-healing polyacrylates based on dynamic disulfide and quadruple hydrogen bonds

Abstract

Herein, a self-healing polyacrylate system was successfully prepared by introducing crosslinking agents containing disulfide bonds and monomers capable of forming quadruple hydrogen bonds through free radical copolymerization. This polymer material exhibited good toughness and self-healing properties through chemical and physical dual dynamic networks while maintaining excellent mechanical properties, which expanded the development path of self-healing acrylate materials. Compared to uncrosslinked and single dynamically crosslinked polymers, its elongation at break was as high as 437%, and its tensile strength was 5.48 MPa. Due to the presence of dual reversible dynamic bonds in the copolymer system, good self-healing was also achieved at 60 °C. In addition, differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis measurements confirmed that the thermal stability and glass transition temperature of the material were improved owing to the presence of physical and chemical cross-linking networks.