Flexible self-healing nanocomposites for recoverable motion sensor

The recoverable motion sensor with high sensitivity was made based on flexible self-healing nanocomposites. The preparation of these nanocomposites involved incorporating surface-modified CaCu₃Ti₄O₁₂ (S-CCTO) nanoparticles in self-healing polymer matrix based on dynamic Diels-Alder (DA) adducts. The dependences of electric and dielectric properties of the resultant composites on volume fractions of filler and frequency were investigated. It is found that composites present a high dielectric permittivity of 93 at 100Hz with 17vol% filler, approximately 36 times higher than that of pure film. These results agree well with the percolation theory. Furthermore, the hybrid film recovers its capacitance well following a cut and the self-healing process based on DA and retro-DA (r-DA) reaction. We herein show that a polymer matrix based on dynamic DA adducts can be used to make self-healing high-K polymer nanocomposites and recoverable motion sensors. This work may lead to new opportunities for the design and fabrication of various next-generation wearable sensor devices.