Reconfigurable 4D printing via mechanically robust covalent adaptable network shape memory polymer

Honggeng Li; Biao Zhang; Haitao Ye; Bingcong Jian; Xiangnan He; Jianxiang Cheng; Zechu Sun; Rong Wang; Zhe Chen; Ji Lin; Rui Xiao; Qingjiang Liu; Qi Ge

doi:10.1126/sciadv.adl4387

Reconfigurable 4D printing via mechanically robust covalent adaptable network shape memory polymer

Sci Adv. 2024 May 17;10(20):eadl4387. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adl4387. Epub 2024 May 15.

Authors

Honggeng Li^{1

2

3}, Biao Zhang⁴, Haitao Ye^{1

2

5}, Bingcong Jian^{1

2}, Xiangnan He^{1

2}, Jianxiang Cheng^{1

2}, Zechu Sun^{1

2}, Rong Wang^{1

2}, Zhe Chen^{1

2}, Ji Lin^{6

7}, Rui Xiao⁷, Qingjiang Liu^{1

2}, Qi Ge^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Soft Mechanics & Smart Manufacturing, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
² Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
³ School of Advanced Engineering, Great Bay University, Dongguan, China.
⁴ Xi'an Institute of Flexible Electronics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, 127 West Youyi Road, Xi'an, China.
⁵ Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
⁶ Center for Mechanics Plus under Extreme Environments, School of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
⁷ State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic System, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.

Abstract

4D printing enables 3D printed structures to change shape over "time" in response to environmental stimulus. Because of relatively high modulus, shape memory polymers (SMPs) have been widely used for 4D printing. However, most SMPs for 4D printing are thermosets, which only have one permanent shape. Despite the efforts that implement covalent adaptable networks (CANs) into SMPs to achieve shape reconfigurability, weak thermomechanical properties of the current CAN-SMPs exclude them from practical applications. Here, we report reconfigurable 4D printing via mechanically robust CAN-SMPs (MRC-SMPs), which have high deformability at both programming and reconfiguration temperatures (>1400%), high T_g (75°C), and high room temperature modulus (1.06 GPa). The high printability for DLP high-resolution 3D printing allows MRC-SMPs to create highly complex SMP 3D structures that can be reconfigured multiple times under large deformation. The demonstrations show that the reconfigurable 4D printing allows one printed SMP structure to fulfill multiple tasks.