The self-healing mechanism of an industrial acrylic elastomer

The self-healing materials attract a lot of attention as self-healing ability considerably improves reliability of service and extends the life time of materials. However, the present self-healing materials lack the mechanical strength and thus cannot be used in practical applications. The industrial elastomer (VHB 4910) is a strong polymer, which has been used as dielectric actuator. Surprisingly, we observed that VHB 4910 has autonomic self-healing ability. As this is an acrylic polymer, we analyzed the hydrogen bonding between carbonyl and hydroxyl groups and demonstrated that this bonding and the molecular chain entanglement contributes to its self-healing ability. The tensile test, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman, and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy were employed to analyze the self-healing processes. This study provides an insight into the mechanism of self-healing behavior and ability of VHB 4910 to recover its strength. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 42135.