title: Design of Self-Healing Supramolecular Rubbers by Introducing Ionic Cross-Links into Natural Rubber via a Controlled Vulcanization.
abstract: Introducing ionic associations is one of the most effective approaches to realize a self-healing behavior for rubbers. However, most of commercial rubbers are nonpolar rubbers without now available functional groups to be converted into ionic groups. In this paper, our strategy was based on a controlled peroxide-induced vulcanization to generate massive ionic cross-links via polymerization of zinc dimethacrylate (ZDMA) in natural rubber (NR) and exploited it as a potential self-healable material. We controlled vulcanization process to retard the formation of covalent cross-link network, and successfully generated a reversible supramolecular network mainly constructed by ionic cross-links. Without the restriction of covalent cross-linkings, the NR chains in ionic supramolecular network had good flexibility and mobility. The nature that the ionic cross-links was easily reconstructed and rearranged facilitating the self-healing behavior, thereby enabling a fully cut sample to rejoin and retain to its original properties after a suitable self-healing process at ambient temperature. This study thus demonstrates a feasible approach to impart an ionic association induced self-healing function to commercial rubbers without ionic functional groups.
authors.affiliation: School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangxi University , Nanning 530004, China.|The Key Laboratory of Polymer Processing Engineering, Ministry of Education, South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510640, China.
authors.forename: Chuanhui
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: The Key Laboratory of Polymer Processing Engineering, Ministry of Education, South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510640, China.
authors.forename: Liming
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangxi University , Nanning 530004, China.
authors.forename: Baofeng
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangxi University , Nanning 530004, China.
authors.forename: Xingquan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: The Key Laboratory of Polymer Processing Engineering, Ministry of Education, South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510640, China.
authors.forename: Yukun
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
keywords: controlled vulcanization; ionic supramolecular network; natural rubber; self-healing; zinc dimethacrylate