Journal
JOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRY A
Volume 9, Issue 23, Pages 13615-13624Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/d1ta02635f
Keywords
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Funding
- CN Yang Scholars Program
- Ministry of Education (MOE) Tier 1 grant (Singapore) [MOE2018-T1-002-179]
- NTU-SUG grant [9069]
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The study focuses on thermally driven optical transitions in ionogels, showing their enhanced stability and repeatable optical transitions, with potential for long-term use in harsh environments.
Hydrogels are able to exhibit optical transitions in the presence of external stimuli such as temperature, driven by the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) phenomena. However, they suffer from inherent thermal instability, requiring reswelling for repeated utilisation. Ionogels possess greater thermal stability over conventional hydrogels. However, thermally driven optical transitions via LCST phenomena in ionic liquid incorporated polymer networks have not been studied in-depth. In this work, we incorporated a low amount of 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide in a polymer matrix, to trigger the desired reversible optical transitions based on the LCST phenomenon. The composition of the ionic liquid elastomer hybrid is in contrast to conventional hydrogels which possess high amounts of liquid. We present NMR and UV-vis spectroscopic studies to reveal the underlying reversible hydrogen bonding based mechanism behind this optical transition. Unlike conventional hydrogels, our hybrids show excellent thermal and ambient stability along with repeatable optical transitions with comparable response time, indicative of their long term use in harsher environments. Improvements in the mechanical properties with the inclusion of ionic liquid in our hybrids were also observed (40% increase in ultimate strain, 34% decrease in Young's modulus). The enhanced properties and optical transition of the ionic liquid elastomer hybrids allowed them to serve as a patternable smart display and a stretchable & flexible device.
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