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Self-healing polyurethane elastomers based on charge-transfer interactions for biomedical applications

Polymer Journal volume 53, pages 355–362 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

One promising application of self-healing polymeric materials is biomedical use. Although charge-transfer (CT) interactions have been employed to construct self-healing polymers as well as other reversible bonds and interactions, their potential for biomedical applications has never been investigated. In this study, we fabricated self-healable and cell-compatible polyurethane elastomers cross-linked by CT complexes between electron-rich pyrene (Py) and electron-deficient naphthalene diimide (NDI) by simply blending two linear polymers with Py or NDI as a repeating unit. The elastomers with different blend ratios self-healed damage over 1 day in mild conditions, including in air and water at 30–100 °C. The mechanical properties of damaged elastomers were almost restored after healing in air at 100 °C, and even in air at 30 °C and in water at 70 °C, healing was also possible to a certain extent. The good cell compatibility of the polyurethane elastomers was demonstrated by culturing two kinds of cells on the thin film substrates.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant No. 16H07292 and 19K15623, KI), MEXT LEADER (Grant No. A6501, KI), and the Izumi Science and Technology Foundation (Grant No. H29-J-113, KI). A research grant from the Mitsubishi Materials–Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University (2016, 2018) and a Grant for Young Scientists Encouragement from the Waseda Research Institute for Science and Engineering–JXTG Energy (2017) are also acknowledged for financial support.

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  1. Department of Life Science and Medical Bioscience, Waseda University (TWIns), 2-2 Wakamatsu-cho, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 162-8480, Japan

    Keiichi Imato, Hidekazu Nakajima, Ryota Yamanaka & Naoya Takeda

  2. Department of Applied Chemistry, Hiroshima University, 1-4-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, 739-8527, Japan

    Keiichi Imato

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Imato, K., Nakajima, H., Yamanaka, R. et al. Self-healing polyurethane elastomers based on charge-transfer interactions for biomedical applications. Polym J 53, 355–362 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41428-020-00432-4

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