Multiple hydrogen bonding interactions toward rapidly self-healing, photothermal conversion elastomer composites

Despite the photothermal conversion elastomers were widespread used in solar power collection and shape-morphing devices, the fabrication of photothermal conversion elastomer integrated with low cost, fast self-healing, high healing efficiency, and comparable mechanical property, remained a challenge. To address this issue, we reported a kind of elastomer composites with fast self-healing and excellent photothermal conversion property through the multiple hydrogen bonding interactions between natural rubber (NR), carboxylate cellulose nanocrystal (C–CNC) and polydopamine (PDA). In these elastomer composites, NR acted as the elastic matrix and the C–CNC with rich carboxylic and hydroxy groups played the role as the reinforcement. Particularly, PDA with abundant hydroxy groups and secondary amines groups that was used as the photothermal agent, endowed these elastomer composites with photothermal conversion capability. Moreover, the formation of multiple hydrogen bonding networks endowed the elastomer with fast and spontaneous self-healing capability, and the healing efficiency of strain reached 92.2% within 5 min. Meanwhile, these elastomers showed excellent photothermal conversion performance and the photothermal conversion efficiency was 49.7%. Furthermore, these photothermal conversion elastomer composites present a great potential application in thermoelectric conversion and photo-triggered shape memory devices.