It is highly desirable, although very challenging, to develop self‐healable materials exhibiting both high efficiency in self‐healing and excellent mechanical properties at ambient conditions. Herein, a novel Cu(II)–dimethylglyoxime–urethane‐complex‐based polyurethane elastomer (Cu–DOU–CPU) with synergetic triple dynamic bonds is developed. Cu–DOU–CPU demonstrates the highest reported mechanical performance for self‐healing elastomers at room temperature, with a tensile strength and toughness up to 14.8 MPa and 87.0 MJ m−3, respectively. Meanwhile, the Cu–DOU–CPU spontaneously self‐heals at room temperature with an instant recovered tensile strength of 1.84 MPa and a continuously increased strength up to 13.8 MPa, surpassing the original strength of all other counterparts. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the coordination of Cu(II) plays a critical role in accelerating the reversible dissociation of dimethylglyoxime–urethane, which is important to the excellent performance of the self‐healing elastomer. Application of this technology is demonstrated by a self‐healable and stretchable circuit constructed from Cu–DOU–CPU.
Stretchable conductive fibers are key elements for next‐generation flexible electronics. Most existing conductive fibers are electron‐based, opaque, relatively rigid, and show a significant increase in resistance during stretching. Accordingly, soft, stretchable, and transparent ion‐conductive hydrogel fibers have attracted significant attention. However, hydrogel fibers are difficult to manufacture and easy to dry and freeze, which significantly hinders their wide range of applications. Herein, organohydrogel fibers are designed to address these challenges. First, a newly designed hybrid crosslinking strategy continuously wet‐spins hydrogel fibers, which are transformed into organohydrogel fibers by simple solvent replacement. The organohydrogel fibers show excellent antifreezing (< ‐80 °C) capability, stability (>5 months), transparency, and stretchability. The predominantly covalently crosslinked network ensures the fibers have a high dynamic mechanical stability with negligible hysteresis and creep, from which previous conductive fibers usually suffer. Accordingly, strain sensors made from the organohydrogel fibers accurately capture high‐frequency (4 Hz) and high‐speed (24 cm s−1) motion and exhibit little drift for 1000 stretch–release cycles, and are powerful for detecting rapid cyclic motions such as engine valves and are difficult to reach by previously reported conductive fibers. The organohydrogel fibers also demonstrate potential as wearable anisotropic sensors, data gloves, soft electrodes, and optical fibers.
A dynamic oxime–carbamate based polyurethane hot melt adhesive was developed with outstanding adhesion performance to multiple substrates, and detachable and self-healing properties.
Natural tissues possess superior material properties such as self-healing, mechanical robustness, and mechanical gradients that allow organisms to adapt and survive in dangerous environments. Although highly desired, imparting synthetic materials with these biomimetic protective features remains a challenge. Here, the versatile dimethylglyoxime-urethane (DOU) moiety is used to create a multifunctional polyurethane (DOU-PU). The reactivities of DOU including reversible dissociation, metal coordination, photolysis enabled self-healing, high strength and toughness, mechanical gradient formation, and spatially controlled functionalization. By incorporating DOU, a multifunctional protective film is produced with superior resistance to mechanical damage, rapid room temperature self-healing, and anti-counterfeiting features. This super biomimetic film is expected to be very useful for the protection of various types of valuable objects such as electronics, diplomas, currency, and automobiles.
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