Bioinspired liquid-infused materials for self-healing and self-stiffening

Natural materials such as coral reefs and bones can repair damages and adapt to changes of mechanical environment. Some of their common features are use of porous structures and environmental liquids such as seawater and blood. Inspired by these examples, we report a bioinspired pathway for synthetic self-healing and self-stiffening materials based on porous liquid-infused piezoelectric scaffolds. Building on our previous work demonstrating mineral deposition from surrounding mineral solution in response to mechanical loading[1], the new material system is for non-liquid environment. We investigated the synthesis of open porous piezoelectric composites by studying effects of solution concentration, curing temperature and particle size. From x-ray computed tomography, we confirmed the average pore size is ~89 um, which is well below capillary length of water. We will present our characterization of piezoelectric properties, liquid-infusion capability as well as self-healing and self-stiffening capability. We envision our approach would be beneficial for diverse environments overcoming some challenges of current synthetic materials for load-bearing application.

1. Orrego et al. Bioinspired Materials with Self-Adaptable Mechanical Properties. Advanced Materials 32 (2020): 1906970.