A New Approach Toward Metal-Free Self-Healing Ionomers Based on Phosphate and Methacrylate Containing Copolymers

In order to accelerate the progress of the development of new self-healing ionomers, a new pathway toward fully organic ionomers containing methacrylic acid and phosphate-based functional groups, respectively, as well as butyl methacrylate as comonomer is presented in the current study. The well-defined copolymer structures are synthesized using the reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization and further characterized by NMR, size exclusion chromatography as well as titration. Two different metal-free ionomers as well as one reference K⁺ based ionomer are created and tested. The results of the detailed investigation by NMR, thermal analysis, and rheology are correlated with the scratch-healing performance in order to identify trends and dependencies leading to preconditions for further improvements.