The China Materials Conference 2025 was held recently in Xiamen International Convention and Exhibition Center, Fujian Province, China. The conference attracted over ten thousand experts and scholars. Zhang Tianwei, Ph.D. student from Wuhan University of Technology, Project PI of NEXCEL 2024 PHD project "Preparation and Performance of Self-healing Polymer Modified Asphalt Waterproof Membranes," delivered a presentation titled "Preparation and Performance Investigation of Self-healing SBS Modified Asphalt Based on Dynamic Disulfide Bonds" at the Ecological Building Materials session.

The research team innovatively synthesized terminal C=C-functionalized dynamic disulfide compounds and successfully incorporated them into styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) copolymer chains via free radical polymerization, thereby developing a novel self-healing SBS-modified asphalt.The results indicated that the introduction of dynamic disulfide bonds significantly improves the healing ability of SBS modified asphalt on the macro-micro-nano scale. In addition, compared to SBS modified asphalt, self-healing SBS modified asphalt had better physical properties, which is attributed to the introduction of dynamic disulfide bonds that increase the chemical cross-linking degree of SBS molecular chains, enabling it to have a more complete cross-linking network structure.