A 3D printable and self-healing polydimethylsiloxane elastomer

Abstract

Silicone elastomers are broadly used in various fields because of their unique properties, such as flexibility, durable dielectric insulation, and excellent stability in hash environments. As a result, three-dimensional (3D) printing of silicone elastomers is frequently required to construct personalized structures. However, existing 3D-printing of silicone elastomers are less accurate, difficult to maintain shape, or require doping modification with thixotropic agents. Moreover, common 3D-printable silicone elastomers do not have self-healing capability, so they have to be discarded upon damaging. Herein, by introducing hydrogen bonds to improve the shape retention ability and induce network reversibility, we have developed a self-healing polydimethylsiloxane elastomer, which can be readily 3D-printed by fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology. We believe that this new silicone elastomer would be useful in the field of biomedical materials, flexible electronics, medical inserts, soft robots and so on.