Issue 33, 2024

NIR-induced photothermal-responsive shape memory polyurethane for versatile smart material applications

Abstract

Stimuli responsiveness has been an attractive feature of smart material design, allowing the chemical and physical properties of the materials to change in response to small environmental variations. The versatile shape memory polyurethane (SMPU) has been advanced into thermally-responsive SMPU, enabling its use in neurovascular stents, smart fibers for compression garments, and thermal-responsive components for aircraft and aerospace structures. While thermally-induced SMPU materials exhibit excellent shape recovery and fixity, they encounter limitations such as long response times, energy-intensive heating processes, and potential damage to heat-sensitive components, hindering their wide application. Thus, SMPU has further advanced into a photothermal-responsive material by incorporating photothermal agents into the polymer matrix, offering faster response times, compatibility with heat-sensitive materials, and enhanced mechanical properties, expanding the versatility and applicability of shape memory technology. This review focuses on the classes of NIR-induced photothermal agent used in SMPU systems, their synthesis methods, and photothermal-responsive mechanism under NIR-light, which offers a dual responsiveness to the host SMPU. The advantages and limitations of NIR-induced photothermal SMPU are reviewed, and challenges in their development are discussed.

Graphical abstract: NIR-induced photothermal-responsive shape memory polyurethane for versatile smart material applications

Transparent peer review

To support increased transparency, we offer authors the option to publish the peer review history alongside their article.

View this article’s peer review history

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
30 Jun. 2024
Accepted
25 Jul. 2024
First published
05 Aug. 2024
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

RSC Adv., 2024,14, 24265-24286

NIR-induced photothermal-responsive shape memory polyurethane for versatile smart material applications

K. Y. Lam, C. S. Lee and R. Y. H. Tan, RSC Adv., 2024, 14, 24265 DOI: 10.1039/D4RA04754K

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements