Accelerating Self-Healing Driven by Surface Energy Using Bulky Ester Groups in Polymer Materials

In general, acquiring highly efficient recovery and speed needs additional healing conditions or complex chemical structures under typical ambient conditions and intervention, making it difficult to optimize them simultaneously. Herein, self-healable polyurethane materials driven by stronger surface energy were fabricated by two-step methods to acquire high healing speed and efficiency as well as mechanical property. The obtained films have a high healing efficiency and tensile strength as well as a shorter healing time without requiring additional healing conditions and complex chemical structures at room temperature. Incorporating diethyl bis(hydroxymethyl)malonate can tune loosely packed hard domains, molecule chain mobility, and surface energy, which leads to a low junction density that helps increase the surface energy driving force and accelerate self-healing. This self-healable polyurethane will offer an effective guide and reference for designing high-performance self-healing materials in the future.