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Be Strong, Tough, Adaptive and Self-healing: Life Lessons Applied to Soft Material Designs

Wyss EventLecture

Many biopolymers not only have advanced mechanical properties such as high modulus, toughness, and elasticity, but more importantly, exhibit dynamic properties. Inspired by Nature, Dr. Zhibin Guan and his team have designed a series of biomimetic modular polymers with folded nano-domains as the repeat units. These new materials manifest an exciting combination of key mechanical, as well as adaptive properties that have until now proven difficult to achieve in man-made systems.

Dr. Guan will discuss the development of strong and spontaneous self-healing polymers. In contrast to previous designs, his team’s system spontaneously self-heals as a single-component solid at ambient conditions without the need of any external stimulus, healing agent, plasticizer, or solvent. Dr. Guan will also talk about the development of several other strategies for self-healing materials including the use of dynamic metal-ligand interactions, and dynamic covalent bond exchange.

Please join Dr. Guan as he examines the design, synthesis, and single molecule and macroscopic property studies of several dynamic adaptive polymers, as well as strong and autonomic self-healing systems.

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