Developments of polymers that are capable of spontaneous repairs upon mechanical damage have generated significant scientific challenges and technological interests.If designed properly, self-healing due to reversible reformation of chemical bonds in metal-containing polymers offers significant advantages. These studiesfocused on the development of UV repairable polyethylenimine-copper sulfate (C2H5N-Cu) supramolecular polymer networks that exhibit high efficiency of converting electromagnetic radiation to chemical energy with negligible temperature changes (< 5 oC), thus minimizing network decomposition, yet allowing repetitive damage-repair cycles. Taking this step further, combining polyurethane and polydimethylsiloxane networks with the coordination chemistry by the utilizing CuCl2 and reformation of Si-O covalent bonds have led to self-repairing networks with the ability of forming coordination bonds and covalent Si-O bonds. These studies show that combining reversible covalent bonding and coordination chemistry offer unique self-repairing polymer networks.

Metal-containing self-healing polymer networks

248th National Meeting (2014)

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