{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,29]],"date-time":"2026-10-29T01:35:07Z","timestamp":1793237707327,"version":"4.5.0"},"reference-count":39,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"15","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,22]],"date-time":"2025-07-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1753142400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Scientific and Technological Research Project of the Academician Workstation at PetroChina Southwest Oil &amp; Gas field Company","award":["JS2024-11"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JS2024-11"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Polymers"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Lost circulation is a major challenge in oil and gas drilling operations, severely restricting drilling efficiency and compromising operational safety. Conventional bridging and plugging materials rely on precise particle-to-fracture size matching, resulting in low success rates. Self-healing gels penetrate loss zones as discrete particles that progressively swell, accumulate, and self-repair in integrated gel masses to effectively seal fracture networks. Self-healing gels effectively overcome the shortcomings of traditional bridging agents including poor adaptability to fractures, uncontrollable gel formation of conventional downhole crosslinking gels, and the low strength of conventional pre-crosslinked gels. This work employs stearyl methacrylate (SMA) as a hydrophobic monomer, acrylamide (AM) and acrylic acid (AA) as hydrophilic monomers, and graphene oxide (GO) as an inorganic dopant to develop a GO-based self-healing organic\u2013inorganic hybrid plugging material (SG gel). The results demonstrate that the incorporation of GO significantly enhances the material\u2019s mechanical and rheological properties, with the SG-1.5 gel exhibiting a rheological strength of 3750 Pa and a tensile fracture stress of 27.1 kPa. GO enhances the crosslinking density of the gel network through physical crosslinking interactions, thereby improving thermal stability and reducing the swelling ratio of the gel. Under conditions of 120 \u00b0C and 6 MPa, SG-1.5 gel demonstrated a fluid loss volume of only 34.6 mL in 60\u201380-mesh sand bed tests. This gel achieves self-healing within fractures through dynamic hydrophobic associations and GO-enabled physical crosslinking interactions, forming a compact plugging layer. It provides an efficient solution for lost circulation control in drilling fluids.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/polym17151999","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,22]],"date-time":"2025-07-22T08:45:18Z","timestamp":1753173918000},"page":"1999","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Preparation and Performance Evaluation of Graphene Oxide-Based Self-Healing Gel for Lost Circulation Control"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Wenzhe","family":"Li","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Petroleum Engineering School, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China"},{"name":"Engineering Technology Research Institute, PetroChina Southwest Oil & Gas Field Company, Chengdu 610017, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1243-0545","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Pingya","family":"Luo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Petroleum Engineering School, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xudong","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Engineering Technology Research Institute, PetroChina Southwest Oil & Gas Field Company, Chengdu 610017, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3446","DOI":"10.1016\/j.petsci.2024.04.016","article-title":"Curing kinetics and plugging mechanism of high strength curable resin plugging material","volume":"21","author":"Yang","year":"2024","journal-title":"Pet. 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