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Photochromic Inorganic/Organic Thermoplastic Elastomers
Author(s) -
Zhang Jiuyang,
Li Jing,
Huo Mengmeng,
Li Naixu,
Zhou Jiancheng,
Li Tuoqi,
Jiang Jing
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
macromolecular rapid communications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.348
H-Index - 154
eISSN - 1521-3927
pISSN - 1022-1336
DOI - 10.1002/marc.201700210
Subject(s) - photochromism , materials science , elastomer , thermoplastic elastomer , polymer , composite material , thermoplastic , ductility (earth science) , nanotechnology , copolymer , creep
Photochromic materials are an important class of “smart materials” and are broadly utilized in technological devices. However, most photochromic materials reported so far are composed of inorganic compounds that are challenging to process and suffer from poor mechanical performance, severely limiting their applications in various markets. In this paper, inorganic photochromic tungsten trioxide (WO 3 ) nanocrystals are conveniently grafted with polymers to hurdle the deficiency in processability and mechanical properties. This new type of photochromic material can be thermally processed into desired geometries like disks and dog‐bone specimens. Fully reversible photochromic response under UV light is also achieved for WO 3 ‐graft polymers, exhibiting tunable response rate, outperforming the pristine WO 3 nanocrystals. Notably, the resulted graft polymers show extraordinary mechanical performance with excellent ductility (≈800% breaking strain) and relatively high breaking strength (≈2 MPa). These discoveries elucidate an effective pathway to design smart inorganic/organic hybrid thermoplastic elastomers endowed with outstanding photochromic and mechanical properties as well as exceptional processability.