A self-healing, re-moldable and biocompatible crosslinked polysiloxane elastomer

Abstract

The thermally healable polysiloxane elastomers were successfully prepared by cross-linking polydimethylsiloxane bearing maleimide pendants with furan-end functionalized siloxane via the Diels–Alder (DA) reaction. The elastomers with good mechanical properties show excellent self-healing and remoldability functions due to the thermally reversible feature of the DA reaction. The molecular mechanism of self-healing was confirmed by in situ structural characterization. Moreover, the biocompatibility of the polysiloxane elastomer containing DA bonds is found to be fairly good by cytotoxicity evaluation and animal subcutaneous experiments, suggesting its potential applications in the biomedical field as artificial skin and scaffolds for tissue engineering.