Prof. Tao XIE's Group

Dynamic covalent polymer networks have received surged interest lately due to their unique properties (self-healing, solid-state plasticity, and reprocessability) not offed by conventional thermosets. Despite the promises, it has been infeasible to tune the temperature required to activate the dynamic network within a particular set of dynamic chemistry. In this work, two sets of dynamic bonds (urethane and hindered urea) are incorporated into a hybrid network for synthesizing shape memory poly(urea-urethane). By changing the bond ratio, networks with highly tunable topological rearrangement kinetics are obtained. Moreover, combining self-healing, solid-state plasticity, and reprocessability in such one shape memory network leads to unusual versatility shape shifting behaviors beyond currently known SMP. This paper titled Healable, Reconfigurable, Reprocessable Thermoset Shape Memory Polymer with Highly Tunable Topological Rearrangement Kinetics was published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces (DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b05713).