Zwitterionic copolymer-based and hydrogen bonding-strengthened self-healing hydrogel

Self-healing systems that can spontaneously repair their damage would significantly improve the safety and prolong the lifetime of man-made materials. As external energy or healing agents are required in most of the self-healing approaches, non-covalently cross-linked polymeric hydrogels with intrinsic healing nature have attracted much attention recently. We present here a P(AM-co-DMAPS) zwitterionic copolymer based self-healing hydrogel, where AM and DMAPS are acrylamide and 3-((2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl)dimethylammonio)propane-1-sulfonate, respectively. The electrostatic interactions within DMAPS and hydrogen bonding between AM moieties contribute to the physical cross-linking of the polymer chains and self-healing ability of the hydrogel. The reported strategy represents a general and facile route to construct zwitterionic copolymer based self-healable functional hydrogels for potential applications in the field of enhanced oil recovery (EOR).