Ambient temperature self-healing waterborne polyurethane based on dynamic ditelluride bonds with recyclable and antibacterial functions

Waterborne polyurethanes with higher mechanical properties, excellent self-healing efficiency under moderately controlled conditions and multiple functions are a sort of interesting and useful finishing materials for a wide range of applications. Herein, we prepared a multifunctional waterborne polyurethane (DTe-WPU) with ambient temperature self-healing, recyclable and antibacterial functions by introducing dynamic ditelluride bonds in the main chain. The film of synthesized waterborne polyurethane exhibits strong tensile strength (~17.5 MPa), satisfactory elongation (~860 %), and rapid self-healing (healing efficiency 85.4 % of stress, 91.99 % of stain, at ambient temperature visible light irradiation for 30 min). The film of DTe-WPU-2 can be recycled under pressure and visible light irradiation benefiting from the material's favorable self-healing properties, and the tensile stress of recycled material can be restored to >80 % of its original performance even after three recycle tests. Importantly, the introduction of ditelluride bonds can endow the finishing materials with good antibacterial properties (the antibacterial performance against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus showed 90.2 % and 92.5 %, respectively). Moreover, the leather coating finished with DTe-WPU-2 showed favorable self-healing properties. The present work will be hopefully developed as a facile designing method to fabricate environmentally friendly water dispersion polymers with fast ambient temperature self-repairing performance, recyclable and antimicrobial functions.