Fabrication of Poly(acrylic acid)/Boron Nitride Composite Hydrogels with Excellent Mechanical Properties and Rapid Self-Healing Through Hierarchically Physical Interactions

Shishan Xue; Yuanpeng Wu; Meiling Guo; Dan Liu; Tao Zhang; Weiwei Lei

doi:10.1186/s11671-018-2800-2

Fabrication of Poly(acrylic acid)/Boron Nitride Composite Hydrogels with Excellent Mechanical Properties and Rapid Self-Healing Through Hierarchically Physical Interactions

Nanoscale Res Lett. 2018 Dec 5;13(1):393. doi: 10.1186/s11671-018-2800-2.

Authors

Shishan Xue¹, Yuanpeng Wu^{2

3}, Meiling Guo¹, Dan Liu⁴, Tao Zhang⁵, Weiwei Lei⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, 610500, China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, 610500, China. ypwu@swpu.edu.cn.
³ State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, 610500, China. ypwu@swpu.edu.cn.
⁴ Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Locked Bag 20000, Geelong, Victoria, 3220, Australia.
⁵ College of Textile and Clothing Engineering, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, China. zhang.tao@suda.edu.cn.
⁶ Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Locked Bag 20000, Geelong, Victoria, 3220, Australia. weiwei.lei@deakin.edu.au.

Abstract

Many living tissues possess excellent mechanical properties and self-healing ability. To mimic these living tissues, a series of novel composite hydrogels, poly(acrylic acid)/surface-modified boron nitride nanosheets (PAA/BNNS-NH₂) were fabricated simply through hierarchically physical interactions: molecular-scale metal coordination interaction between -COOH of PAA and Fe³⁺ and nanoscale H-bond between -COOH of PAA and -NH₂ of BNNS-NH₂. The composite hydrogels exhibit both excellent mechanical properties (including enhanced fracture stress, elongation, toughness, Young's modulus, and dissipated energy) and rapid healing ability without any external stimulus. Especially, the B_0.5P₇₀ (the hydrogel with BNNS concentration of 0.5 mg mL^{- 1}, the water content of 70 wt%) exhibits a fracture stress of ~ 1311 kPa and toughness of ~ 4.7 MJ m^{- 3}, almost ~ 3 times and ~ 8 times to B₀P₇₀, respectively. The excellent properties, combined with the simple preparation method, endow these composite hydrogels with potential applications.

Keywords: Boron nitride nanosheets; Hierarchically physical interactions; Self-healing hydrogel.

Abstract

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