Drawing inspiration from biological systems, self-healing materials, which are capable of healing with damage, in a way similar to animals and plants, have been developing rapidly to extend lifespan and enhance the reliability of artificial materials. Layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly, which involves alternate deposition of species with complementary chemical interactions, is a substrate-independent method for the fabrication of composite films with controlled properties. Benefited from the rapid LbL assembly methods, we show that LbL assembly is promising for fabricating both extrinsic and intrinsic self-healing films. Self-healing superhydrophobic films are fabricated by preserving healing agents of fluoroalkylsilane in LbL assembled polyelectrolyte films that are porous and have micro-/nano-scale dual roughness. When the top layer of fluoroalkyl chains decomposes or is scratched, the healing agents migrate to the surface to restore the superhydrophobicity of the films. Taking advantage of exponential LbL assembly to rapidly fabricate micrometer-thick polyelectrolyte multilayer films and control polyelectrolyte interpenetration, we successfully produced intrinsic self-healing polyelectrolyte films that can autonomically repair cuts several tens of micrometers deep and wide when water is sprayed on them. Highly electrically conductive film is fabricated by depositing Ag nanowires on water-enabled self-healable polyelectrolyte film. We proved that the self-healing ability of the polyelectrolyte film is successfully imparted to the Ag nanowire layer (Figure 1).Figure 1. Self-healing, electrically conductive films composed of LbL assembled polyelectrolyte film and Ag nanowire layer.

Layer-by-layer assembled self-healing films

248th National Meeting (2014)

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