title: Highly Flexible, Tough, and Self-Healing Supramolecular Polymeric Materials Using Host-Guest Interaction.
abstract: Flexible, tough, and self-healable polymeric materials are promising to be a solution to the energy problem by substituting for conventional heavy materials. A fusion of supramolecular chemistry and polymer chemistry is a powerful method to create such intelligent materials. Here, a supramolecular polymeric material using multipoint molecular recognition between cyclodextrin (CD) and hydrophobic guest molecules at polymer side chain is reported. A transparent, flexible, and tough hydrogel (host-guest gel) is formed by a simple preparation procedure. The host-guest gel shows self-healing property in both wet state and dry state due to reversible nature of host-guest interaction. The practical utility of the host-guest gel as a scratch curable coating is demonstrated.
authors.affiliation: Department of Macromolecular Science, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka, 560-0043, Japan.
authors.forename: Masaki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nakahata
authors.affiliation: Department of Macromolecular Science, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka, 560-0043, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshinori
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Takashima
authors.affiliation: Department of Macromolecular Science, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka, 560-0043, Japan.
authors.forename: Akira
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Harada
keywords: host-guest interactions; reversible bond formation; scratch-curable coatings; self-healing; tough polymers