Intrinsically Photopolymerizable Dynamic Polymers Derived from a Natural Small Molecule

Developing photopolymerizable polymeric materials offers many opportunities to process materials in a remote and controllable manner. However, most photopolymerizable technologies require the external introduction of photoabsorbing units, whereas designing intrinsically photopolymerizable polymers is still highly challenging. Here, we report that a natural small-molecule disulfide, thioctic acid, can be directly transformed into a poly(disulfides) network under the irradiation of visible light without any external additives. The resulting polymer network exhibits optical transparency, mechanical stretchability and toughness, ambient self-healing ability, and especially strong adhesive ability to different surfaces. The dynamic covalent backbones of the poly(disulfides) endow the depolymerization ability to recycle the material in a closed-loop manner. We foresee that this facile and robust photopolymerization system is of great promise toward low-cost and high-performance photocuring coatings and adhesives.

Automated summary

In this study, it was found that thioctic acid can be directly transformed into a poly(disulfides) network under visible light irradiation, showcasing various excellent properties without the need for external additives.