Issue 41/2015 - Self-healing conductive elastomers are introduced

Recently, the Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully prepared conductive elastic materials with self-healing functions, and the materials show good elasticity and mechanical properties
.

They assembled carbon nanotubes with grafted cyclodextrins on the surface with hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) containing guest amantane groups, and then copolymerized the clathrate and HEMA monomer in a certain proportion in a specific solvent, and the carbon nanotubes formed a cross-linked three-dimensional network structure
with HEMA.
Due to the dense accumulation of carbon nanotubes to form a conductive pathway, the elastic material has good conductive properties
.
When the material is damaged, there are a large number of free subject-guest groups at the cross-section, and the self-healing
of the material can be achieved through the subject-guest interaction after the two cross-sections are recontacted.
Experiments show that after three self-healing cycles, the mechanical properties of the material are restored by more than 50%, and the conductivity is restored by more than
90%.

The material also has potential applications in the fields of humidity sensing and proximity sensing
.
(Zhong)