Supramolecular chemistry

 

Materials with outstanding properties thanks to innovations in supramolecular chemistry
Another way of conceiving matter

Hydrogen bonds enabling supramolecular materials
Countless everyday applications

 

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Hydrogen bonds enabling supramolecular materials

Molecules of fatty acids of vegetable origin, extracted from pine, sunflower or rapeseed, are held together by reversible hydrogen bonds to produce a supramolecular material with outstanding properties.

Self-healing rubber is an elastomer produced from these dimerised or trimerised fatty acids (association of two or three molecules), onto which NH groups, as hydrogen donors, and CO groups, as hydrogen acceptors, have been grafted. These groups help build the hydrogen bonds, and these bonds help reconstitute the self-healing rubber which has the ability to self-repair spontaneously time and again, without any thermal or mechanical stress, and every time recover its elastic deformation ability.