Reviewed by Sarah KellyNov 3 2025
A novel gold-bonded, self-healing polymer can bend, flex, and repair itself without losing conductivity, providing opportunities for advanced wearable electronics and robotics in the future.
Gold nanoparticles are integrated onto a self-heating polymer base in this new technology. Study: Thioether-Functionalized Self-Healing Polyolefins for Flexible Conductors. Image Credit: yuda chen/Shutterstock.com
Traditional electrical conductors used in standard electronic devices are often brittle and lack flexibility, rendering them unsuitable for use in scenarios that require frequent bending, such as in wearable technology and robotic systems.
To address this issue, RIKEN chemists are working to develop durable and flexible conductors specifically designed for these applications. They also aimed for these conductors to possess self-healing properties, enabling them to repair themselves after sustaining damage. Their recent findings were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
In practical scenarios, these conductors are prone to mechanical damage from repeated deformations, which compromise their reliability and shorten their service life. Incorporating self-healing capabilities can effectively address these issues by restoring functionality after damage.
Zhaomin Hou, Center for Sustainable Resource Science, RIKEN
A viable approach for creating flexible conductors involves using a self-healing polymer as a flexible foundation and integrating gold nanoparticles or nanosheets, which possess electrical conductivity, onto it. Nevertheless, imparting such characteristics to polymers presents significant challenges.
Recently, Hou and colleagues have demonstrated that modifying widely used polymers, known as polyolefins, with a sulfur-containing group (thioether) yields a self-healing polymer suitable for flexible conductors.
Polyolefins are ubiquitous in daily life and account for the largest production volume among all polymers. They combine several desirable properties, including low cost, robust mechanical strength, ease of processing, and excellent chemical and environmental stability, making them promising candidates for conductor applications.
Zhaomin Hou, Center for Sustainable Resource Science, RIKEN
The key to the team's achievement was the implementation of an innovative catalyst that allowed them to seamlessly integrate the thioether.
Our work demonstrates that catalyst-controlled copolymerization of olefins with different properties can serve as a useful protocol for synthesizing polyolefin materials with multiple functions for advanced technologies. These findings may inspire further explorations in this area.
Zhaomin Hou, Center for Sustainable Resource Science, RIKEN
One benefit of this method is that sulfur and gold possess a natural attraction towards each other, which facilitates a robust connection between the self-repairing polymer and the gold coatings. Hou stated that the gold coating on the thioether-functionalized polymer was extremely durable, resistant to more than 50 cycles of a tape-peeling test.
By using different building blocks for polyolefins, Hou says the team intends to “create a brand-new family of self-healing polymers for flexible conductors with further higher durability, as well as for other advanced technologies.”
Journal Reference:
Chi, M., et al. (2025) Thioether-Functionalized Self-Healing Polyolefins for Flexible Conductors. Journal of the American Chemical Society. doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5c06579.