Light-Triggered Rapid Self-Healing in Natural Melanin-Graft-Polyurethane with Superior Mechanical Properties.

Authors

Jianglong Li, Lang Shuai, Jianlong Wen, Shui Yu, Boyu Ding, Yingying Xu, Yijing Nie

Published in

Biomacromolecules. Aug 30, 2025. Epub Aug 30, 2025.

Abstract

Fatigue damage inevitably shortens the material service life. Self-healing polymers offer solutions but typically require harsh triggers (e.g., high temperatures or NIR light), limiting engineering applications. Herein, we creatively employ white light to trigger rapid self-healing. Polyurethane (PU) chains are grafted onto natural melanin nanoparticles extracted from squid ink, forming a "core-shell" structure with melanin cores and surface-linked PU chains. This design effectively enhances the mechanical strength of PU (tensile strength of 62.15 MPa) and enables it to achieve efficient healing. Under room-temperature flashlight illumination for 10 min, the grafted PU can achieve a self-healing efficiency of 97.09%. This dual enhancement of mechanical and self-healing properties advances the engineering application of self-healing elastomers.

PMID:
40884797
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 31 Aug 2025.

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