Local strain-induced energy storage as driving force for autogenous scratch closure

Autonomous through-thickness scratch repair (healing) in coatings requires scratch closure and interfacial molecular sealing. Although qualitative aspects of the first stage of self-healing have been addressed, quantitative description enabling the control over the healing process need further understanding. In this work the polymer-architecture...

From Scratch Closure to Electrolyte Barrier Restoration in Self-Healing Polyurethane Coatings

The effects of the soft block fraction and H-bond state in thermoplastic polyurethanes on autonomous entropy-driven scratch closure and barrier restoration are studied. To this aim, comparable polyurethanes with different segmentation states are applied as organic coatings on plain carbon steel plates, scratched under very well-controlled...

Linking interfacial work of deformation from deconvoluted macro-rheological spectrum to early stage healing in selected polyurethanes

The use of rheology and terminal flow relaxation times to predict healing behavior at long healing times is by now quite well accepted. In this work we go one step further and explore the use of macro-rheology (in particular the stored work of deformation) to predict the early stage interfacial healing properties (fracture resistance) of a...

A deconvolution protocol of the mechanical relaxation spectrum to identify and quantify individual polymer feature contributions to self-healing

Starting from experimental macro-rheological data, we develop a fitting protocol that succeeded in the separation of the overlapping relaxation phenomena in the dissipative regime for a set of intrinsic healing polymers healing most effectively near their glass transition temperature T _g . To allow for a proper deconvolution, the...

Controlling Healing and Toughness in Polyurethanes by Branch-Mediated Tube Dilation

In this work, we propose the use of regular branching of polyurethanes as a way to regulate chain dynamics and govern crystallization in highly dense hydrogen-bonded systems. As a result, robust and healable polyurethanes can be obtained. To this end, we synthesized a range of aliphatic propane diol derivatives with alkyl branches ranging...