Towards the Generation of Self-Healing Materials by Means of a Reversible Photo-induced Approach

Photo-induced reversibility as a tool for self-healing: a reversible photo-induced dendritic macromonomer was synthesized and proven to form networks with different features depending on the crosslinking conditions. While networks formed from aqueous systems exhibited a reversible change in their crosslinking degree, networks generated in bulk underwent fully reversibility. The latter was then exploited for generating self-healing materials by means of a photo-induced treatment.