Photo-responsive liquid crystalline vitrimer containing oligoanilines

Liquid crystalline vitimers (LC-vitrimers) can be easily processed into complex three-dimensional configurations. In this paper, we present a photo-responsive LC-vitrimer by simply introducing a photo thermal agent aniline trimer into the LC-vitrimer system. As aniline trimer acts as a curing agent, it can be homogeneously dispersed in the material, avoiding aggregation which commonly happens to nano fillers. As a result, the resultant polymer not only can perform three light-controlled functions (welding, healing and shape memory), but also can be prepared into aligned monodomain LC actuators with strains of about 40%-45%. (C) 2017 Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.