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Updated: Aug 3, 2025

Synthesis of Programmable Main-chain Liquid-crystalline Elastomers Using a Two-stage Thiol-acrylate Reaction
Published on: January 19, 2016
Narrow response temperature range with excellent reversible shape memory effect for semi-crystalline networks as soft
Dequan Chi1, Haoyu Gu1, Jingfeng Wang2
1MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, P. R. China. liuyy@hit.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Complex and controlled reversible actuation inevitably relies on changing thermal fields (direct or indirect) for semi-crystalline reversible shape memory networks. Unfortunately, the non-tunability of thermal signals often brings potential limitations to actuators' applications. In practice, a wide response temperature range (T-range) formed by Thigh and Tlow in the remarkable reversible actuation is an obvious fact. Herein, we demonstrate the tunability of the transition temperatures while stably maintaining excellent actuation abilities. We further verified that the narrow T-range (24 °C) that had not been reported could present more than 17% reversible strain. Special parameter optimization provides opportunities for potential non-implantable biomedical applications. Therefore, based on target 2W-SMP, a vehicle concept with the drug release and vehicle recovery ability was proposed, proving our approach's feasibility.

