Design of self-healable supramolecular hybrid network based on carboxylated styrene butadiene rubber and nano-chitosan.

In this paper, carboxylated styrene butadiene rubber (XSBR)/nano-chitosan (NCS) composites were prepared via a salt-forming reaction, in which NCS participated in constructing a supramolecular hybrid network. NCS served as multiple-functional cross-linker as well as reinforcer for XSBR. This turned out that the mechanical properties of XSBR could be improved by NCS, and simultaneously, the self-healing property was retained to utmost extent. With 20 wt% NCS, the tensile strength of NCS/XSBR composite was increased to 1.3 MPa, more than 2-time that of the neat XSBR, meanwhile, the healing efficiency was as high as to 92% after healing at ambient temperature for 24 h.