A leather coating with self-healing characteristics

Abstract

Genuine leather is often coated before making daily necessities such as shoes, clothing, bags, sofas, car seats, etc., so as to impart leather products various colours, higher wear resistance and water resistance and so on. However, the coating of these products is often damaged in daily use which will decrease its aesthetic effect and practicability. Therefore, how to improve the scratch resistance of leather coatings has been puzzling people all the time. It is a common knowledge that animals and plants can repair the injured biological tissues by himself. According to this principle, here, we prepared a type of self-healing water-borne polyurethane with disulfide bond in the main chain by using HEDS as chain extender, and the self-healing system was triggered by the disulfide bonds with the help of shape memory function of waterborne Polyurethane, self-healing experiments how that the damaged of leather coating can be repaired fully at 60 °C for 12 h. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].