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Light- and pH-responsive self-healing hydrogel

  • Polymers
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Abstract

A self-healing hydrogel was synthesized via the multi-component reaction of azobenzene-methacrylamide, β-CD and 3-methacrylamido phenylboronic acid. The orthogonal method was applied to analyze the influence of host–guest inclusion complexation, cross-linker and phenylboronic acid monomers content on mechanical properties and healing efficiency of the hydrogel. The results indicated that hydrogel showed autonomic self-healing behavior. The hydrogel demonstrated light-switchable self-healing ability and pH-sensitive swelling ratio. It was found that hydrogel showed high elongation, excellent resilience and low elastic hysteresis. The design of the combined host–guest interactions and boronate esters on the hydrogel showed advantage for improving the mechanical, self-healing and recovery properties simultaneously.

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Acknowledgements

This work is partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 21304075), Beijing Key Laboratory of Quality Evaluation Technology for Hygiene and Safety of Plastics (Beijing Technology and Business University) (Grant SS201707), Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Science, China Scholarship Council Fellowship (Grant 201706970002) and the “Top-rated Discipline” construction scheme of Shaanxi higher education.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Natural Functional Molecule Chemistry of Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Northwest University, Xi’an, 710127, Shaanxi, China

    Meng Yang, Linlin Wang, Yongbin Cheng, Ke Ma, Xinran Wei, Pengxiang Jia & Yongkuan Gong

  2. Beijing Key Laboratory of Quality Evaluation Technology for Hygiene and Safety of Plastics, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing, 100048, China

    Yang Zhang

  3. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Science, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Jingfa Yang & Jiang Zhao

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  1. Meng Yang
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  2. Linlin Wang
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  3. Yongbin Cheng
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  4. Ke Ma
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  5. Xinran Wei
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  6. Pengxiang Jia
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  7. Yongkuan Gong
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  8. Yang Zhang
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  9. Jingfa Yang
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  10. Jiang Zhao
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Correspondence to Pengxiang Jia or Yang Zhang.

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Yang, M., Wang, L., Cheng, Y. et al. Light- and pH-responsive self-healing hydrogel. J Mater Sci 54, 9983–9994 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-019-03547-z

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