In the modern world, expanding the useful lifespan of materials is becoming highly desirable. Thus, self-healing and self-repairing materials should become valuable commodities. To create self-healing materials, our research focuses on the formation of supramolecular materials through hostguest interactions, which is a powerful method to create nonconventional materials. We employ CD and aliphatic groups as host and guest molecules, respectively, to construct supramolecular self-healing materials. Hostguest interactions have unique features due to selective complementary interactions, which have easily tuned material strength and self-healing efficiencies. Supramolecular materials formed by host-guest interactions recover to the initial strength even after the materials were cut in half, and then rejoined.
Creation of photo-responsive hydrogels
To creation of hydrogels, which was switched sol state or gel state by irradiation of UV light or Vis light, we chose the α-cyclodextrin (αCD) and the Azobenezene (Azo). The hydrogel was prepared by mixing CD modified curdlan (CD-CUR) and Azo modified polyacrylic acide (pAC
12Azo), indicated that CD and Azo interacted inside the hyerogel.
To investigate effect of photo stimuli on the hydrogel, we irradiated UV and Vis to the hydrogel. When UV light irradiated to the hydrogel, the hydrogel was changed in state of sol. Subsequently, When Vis light irradiated to the hydrogel, the hydrogel was changed in state of gel.
Tamesue, S.; Takashima, Y.;Yamaguchi, H.; Shinkai, S.; Harada, A., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2010, 49, 7461.
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