Research Article pubs.acs.org/journal/ascecg
Mussel-Inspired Self-Healing of Ultralight Magnetic Frameworks Ning Chen and Qinmin Pan* State Key Laboratory of Robotics and Systems, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, 92 West Dazhi Street, Nangang District, Harbin 150001, P. R. China S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: Ultralight materials have many important applications, but most of them are unable to spontaneously recover their microstructure and functions after physical damage or abuse. Here we report an ultralight magnetic framework that can repair its broken microstructure autonomously via a mussel-inspired strategy. The self-healable framework consists of three-dimensionally (3D) interconnected Fe3O4/C microtubes wrapped with nanoshells of nitrocatecholsubstituted chitosan. The framework spontaneously recovers its configuration integrity and mechanical properties during all 6 breaking/healing cycles through pH-induced coordination between Fe3+ and catecholic moieties. On the basis of the self-healable property, the framework can even be tailored into complicated patterns. The investigation offers a strategy to fabricate multifunctional ultralight materials with a self-healable property and tailorability, which have potential applications in adsorption, energy-storage, and catalysis, and so on. KEYWORDS: Ultralight framework, Self-healable, Mussel-inspired, Nanoshells, Catecholic moiety, pH-induced coordination
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INTRODUCTION Ultra-low-density (
