Advances in Self-Healing Polymer Composites
A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Networks".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 November 2024 | Viewed by 1702
Special Issue Editor
Interests: nanocomposites; advanced materials; self-healing; cross-linking polymers; processing technologies of composite materials; chemical synthesis, preparation and characterization of self-healing materials
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Increasing environmental awareness and industrial competitiveness encourages the introduction and development of repairable and recyclable structural materials that will reduce polymer waste and extend its service life. Introducing a thermoreversible covalent bond in the crosslinked backbone enables the topological reshuffling of polymeric networks, allowing us to rework and reform the crosslinked material. A well-established approach for the design and synthesis of covalent adaptable networks (CAN) is the dissociative Diels–Alder reaction, which takes place between furans and maleimides. As a further development in more easily reprocessable and self-healing thermosets, vitrimers are able to overcome the current drawbacks of CANs. One of the possible mechanisms enabling vitrimeric behaviour in epoxy resins is based on transesterification exchange reactions between esters and beta-hydroxyls formed by reacting epoxy precursors with suitable acids/anhydrides. A good balance between the mechanical performance and self-healing capacities can be also obtained via the precise regulation of the content of disulphide bonds, along with the number of hard segments.
Given the huge amount of unrecyclable waste from thermoset polymer-based products, the potential of the self-healing concept is highly attractive, as it meets the recently increasing demand to create polymers with an efficient end-of-life management.
This Special Issue aims to gather high-quality original research and reviews in the field of the synthesis and functional characterization of thermoreversible self-healing polymers and their applications.
Dr. Alfonso Martone
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- vitrimers
- covalent adaptable networks
- self-healing
- creep
- recyclability
- reactive thermoset
- dynamic bonds
- shape memory
