Thermal induced shape-memory and self-healing of segmented polyurethane containing diselenide bonds

Herein, we synthesized a series of polyurethane copolymers (PUs) with poly(1,4-butylene adipate) glycol as soft segment and 2,4-toluene diisocyanate as well as extenders including 1,4-butanediol and di(1-hydroxyethylene) diselenide as hard segment. The chemical structure, thermal property, crystallization behavior, shape memory, and self-healing performances of the PUs were systematically characterized by a series of experiments. It was found that the PU2 containing a higher diselenide component (∼33 mol %) exhibited both shape memory and self-healing behaviors under a moderate temperature (∼57 °C). Meanwhile, the PUs showed a good repeatability of shape memory function, and their fixity and recovery ratios were all above 90%. Additionally, the dynamic exchangeable feature of diselenide bonding endues the PUs chains with an acceptable reprocessability and self-healing performances, and the PU2 sample could be healed for five times by thermal treatment with the healing efficiencies above 70%. This work provides a heuristic perspective for the development of shape memory and self-healing materials. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018 , 135 , 46326.