Interdiffusion of dangling chains in weak gel and its application to self-repairing material

Abstract: A weak gel having a lot of dangling chains shows autonomic self-repairing behaviour for a significantly short time at room temperature. Mobility of the dangling chains whose one end is not connected to the network is responsible for the repairing nature via entanglement couplings, whereas the permanent network prohibits the macroscopic flow or deformation. Further, it is clarified by a tear experiment that about 80% of the tear strength is recovered for the sample having longer dangling chains. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]