title: Ultrafast self-healing of polymer toward strength restoration.
abstract: Self-healing materials should take effect immediately following crack generation in principle, but the speed of autonomic recovery of mechanical properties through either extrinsic or intrinsic healing strategy reported so far is not that fast. Mostly, a couple of hours are taken for reaching steady state or maximum healing. To accelerate the healing process, the authors of this work make use of antimony pentafluoride as instant hardener of epoxy and successfully encapsulate the highly active antimony pentafluoride-ethanol complex in terms of hollow silica spheres. Accordingly, self-healing agent based on microencapsulated antimony pentafluoride-ethanol complex and epoxy monomer is developed. Epoxy material with the embedded healant capsules can thus be healed within a few seconds, as demonstrated by impact and fatigue tests. It is believed that the outcome presented here might help to move the self-healing technique closer to practical application, especially when the engineering significance of epoxy material is concerned.
authors: Key Laboratory for Polymeric Composite and Functional Materials of Ministry of Education, GD HPPC Lab, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Sun Yat-Sen University , Guangzhou 510275, P. R. China.
authors: Xiao Ji
authors: XJ
authors: Ye
authors: Ji-Long
authors: JL
authors: Zhang
authors: Yong
authors: Y
authors: Zhu
authors: Min Zhi
authors: MZ
authors: Rong
authors: Ming Qiu
authors: MQ
authors: Zhang
authors: Yi Xi
authors: YX
authors: Song
authors: Hong-Xing
authors: HX
authors: Zhang