Ultrarobust subzero healable materials enabled by polyphenol nano-assemblies

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 814 - 10
• Main Authors: Wang, Nan, Yang, Xin, Zhang, Xinxing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 13.02.2023; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 140/125; 140/133; 140/146; 147/143; 147/3; 639/301/1005/1009; 639/301/1023/1025; 639/301/357/341; 639/301/357/354; Artificial muscles; Assemblies; Biomimetics; Crosslinking; Elastomers; Electronics; Humanities and Social Sciences; Low temperature; Mechanical properties; multidisciplinary; Muscles; Polymerization; Polymers; Robots; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Self healing materials; Soft robotics; Solvents; Subzero temperature; Wearable technology
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36461-9

Bio-inspired self-healing materials hold great promise for applications in wearable electronics, artificial muscles and soft robots, etc. However, self-healing at subzero temperatures remains a great challenge because the reconstruction of interactions will experience resistance of the frozen segments. Here, we present an ultrarobust subzero healable glassy polymer by incorporating polyphenol nano-assemblies with a large number of end groups into polymerizable deep eutectic solvent elastomers. The combination of multiple dynamic bonds and rapid secondary relaxations with low activation energy barrier provides a promising method to overcome the limited self-healing ability of glassy polymers, which can rarely be achieved by conventional dynamic cross-linking. The resulted material exhibits remarkably improved adhesion force at low temperature (promotes 30 times), excellent mechanical properties (30.6 MPa) and desired subzero healing efficiencies (85.7% at −20 °C). We further demonstrated that the material also possesses reliable cryogenic strain-sensing and functional-healing ability. This work provides a viable approach to fabricate ultrarobust subzero healable glassy polymers that are applicable for winter sports wearable devices, subzero temperature-suitable robots and artificial muscles. Self-healing materials hold great promise for applications in wearable electronics, artificial muscles and soft robots but selfhealing at subzero temperatures remains a great challenge. Here, the authors present a robust subzero healable glassy polymer by incorporating polyphenol nano-assemblies with a large number of end groups into polymerizable deep eutectic solvent elastomers.