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Gold nanoparticles reinforce self-healing microgel multilayers

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Abstract

We report on the finding that absorption of citrate-stabilized Au nanoparticles into microgel/polyelectrolye multilayer thin films results in an increase in the resistance of those films to strain-induced damage in the dry state while maintaining the remarkable self-healing properties of the films following rehydration. Films were fabricated atop elastomeric poly(dimethylsiloxane) substrates by a centrifuge-assisted layer-by-layer technique using anionic hydrogel microparticles (microgels) and cationic linear polymers as the building blocks. Gold nanoparticles were embedded into swollen hydrogel films by a simple immersion method wherein the Coulombic interactions between the anionic Au particles and the polycation are likely important. After drying, the mechanical properties of films were inferred from the observation of cracks/wrinkles formed during stretching of the elastomeric substrate. As-prepared (no Au) hydrogel films revealed the presence of damage perpendicular to the stretching direction (10% strain), as observed previously. However, Au nanoparticle-doped films displayed significantly reduced damage under identical stretching conditions while forming cracks and wrinkles under higher strains (20–30%). Importantly, all films displayed excellent self-healing behavior upon rehydration regardless of Au content, suggesting that the nanoparticle toughening effect does not interfere with the film mobility required to achieve autonomic repair.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge EmTechBio (LAL, CV, and ABS), the BK21 program (CWP and JDK), the China Scholarship Council (XH), and the TI:GER program at GT (ABS) for financial support of this project. A portion of this work was funded by NSF through the Georgia Tech MRSEC, contract DMR-0820382.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry & Biochemistry and the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA

    Chan Woo Park, Antoinette B. South, Xiaobo Hu & L. Andrew Lyon

  2. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (BK21 Graduate Program), KAIST, Daejeon, 305-701, Republic of Korea

    Chan Woo Park & Jong-Duk Kim

  3. Research Institute of Material Science, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaobo Hu

  4. School of Science, University of Navarra, Pamplona, 31080, Spain

    Claudia Verdes

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  1. Chan Woo Park
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  2. Antoinette B. South
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  3. Xiaobo Hu
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  4. Claudia Verdes
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  5. Jong-Duk Kim
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  6. L. Andrew Lyon
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Correspondence to L. Andrew Lyon.

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Park, C.W., South, A.B., Hu, X. et al. Gold nanoparticles reinforce self-healing microgel multilayers. Colloid Polym Sci 289, 583–590 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00396-010-2353-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00396-010-2353-0

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