Design of new self-healing materials has been an active area of research during the past decade. Many examples have emerged from various studies that employ dynamic interactions to recover the mechanical properties after damage. We have recently reported a multiphase self-healing system that relies on hydrogen bonds in the soft phase (Nat. Chem. 2012 , 4, 467-472). The observed autonomous self-healing was the result of the dynamic exchange of hydrogen bonds embedded in the soft matrix across the damaged interface. Herein we report the utilization of metal-ligand interaction as the dynamic motif in the soft matrix. Metal-ligand interactions can be fine-tuned over a broad spectrum of thermodynamic and kinetic range to obtain promising dynamic self-healing material. Our design relies on well-defined graft polymeric architecture with soft brushes containing simple ligand motif attached to a hard backbone. In this study, we describe the synthesis, metal incorporation, dynamic and self-healing properties of these hybrid materials.

Application of metal-ligand interactions to a multiphasic self-healing metalopolymer

247th National Meeting (2014)

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