Recyclable Self-Healing Polyurethane Cross-Linked by Alkyl Diselenide with Enhanced Mechanical Properties

Dynamic structures containing polymers can behave as thermosets at room temperature while maintaining good mechanical properties, showing good reprocessability, repairability, and recyclability. In this work, alkyl diselenide is effectively used as a dynamic cross-linker for the design of self-healing poly(urea-urethane) elastomers, which show quantitative healing efficiency at room temperature, without the need for any catalysts or external interventions. Due to the combined action of the urea bond and amide bond, the material has better mechanical properties. We also compared the self-healing effect of alkyl diselenide-based polyurethanes and alkyl disulfide-based polyurethanes. The alkyl diselenide has been incorporated into polyurethane networks using a para-substituted amine diphenyl alkyl diselenide. The resulting materials not only exhibit faster self-healing properties than the corresponding disulfide-based materials, but also show the ability to be processed at temperatures as low as 60 °C.