Self-healing of thermoplastic polymer by living polymerization

Autonomic self-healing thermosetting polymers or elastomers have been substantially studied, in which polymerization of the healing agents released from pre-embedded capsules serves as the key issue. As for thermoplastics, another major class of polymeric materials, however, researches on their self-healing approaches are less reported. Here in...

Intrinsic self-healing of polymer solid while keeping integrity and load-bearing capability

Generally, intrinsic self-healing polymers based on reversible covalent bonds scission and reconnection would lose their load bearing capability as a result of molecular cleavage during healing process. This shortcoming also results in creep deformation of the products. To solve the problem, we introduce a novel healing mechanism by using...