Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Yang, Yang
• Terentjev, Eugene M.
• Zhang, Yubai
• Chen, Qiaomei
• Zhao, Yuan
• Wei, Yen
• Ji, Yan

Titel

Reprocessable Thermoset Soft Actuators

Ist Teil von

• Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2019-11, Vol.58 (48), p.17474-17479

Auflage

International ed. in English

Ort / Verlag

Germany: Wiley Subscription Services, Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Widely used traditional thermosets are good candidates for construction of 3D soft actuators because of their excellent stability; however, it is generally acknowledged that they cannot be reprocessed. The time–temperature equivalence principle enables reprocessing of traditional liquid crystalline epoxy thermosets (LCETs) into 3D soft actuators. Even though the transesterification reaction of LCETs is extremely slow, it is fast enough to induce a topology rearrangement and subsequent reprocessing when prolonging the transesterification time according to aforementioned principle. Therefore, LCETs can be aligned by a simple procedure. The alignment is quite stable at high temperature and remains after more than 1000 heating–cooling actuation cycles. The resulting 3D soft actuators are remouldable, reprogrammable, reconfigurable, weldable, self‐healable, recyclable, and stable, which is impossible for any traditional thermosets and is therefore a compelling advance in terms of the applications open to 3D soft actuators. Liquid‐crystalline epoxy thermosets (LCETs) can be reprocessed into various complex 3D soft actuators by reconfiguring, reprogramming, and welding their structures. The slow transesterification reaction of LCETs is, nonetheless, fast enough to allow topology rearrangement and subsequent reprocessing when the transesterification time is prolonged according to the time–temperature equivalence principle.