Microscopic understanding of the structure and dynamics of self-healing macromolecules

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The contribution of FZJ aims at a microscopic understanding of new polymeric systems which are predicated on reversible crosslinking through hydrogen bonding. These are prominent key actors for the design of novel self-healing properties which counteract damage processes directly and autonomously on the molecular level. A microscopic understanding of the self-healing process is feasible only by a combination of neutron scattering and complementary laboratory macroscopic techniques. Due to the exquisite sensitivity of neutron scattering to both, relevant length scales and time scales, local and global structure and dynamics relating to the character of reversible hydrogen-bonding itself and its implication for emerging new elastic macroscopic properties respectively will be addressed. In the systems to be investigated the reactive end groups and basic monomer chemistry will be varied along a polarity scheme which affects the bonding energy. Given the similarity of the H-bonding entities, the expected results apply also to the basic chemistry of parallel proposals to this DFG call and allow generalization and finally controlled design of new adaptive high-performance composites.