Green and sustainable cellulose-based shape memory composites with excellent conductivity for temperature warning

Zhicheng Jiang; Yanling Wang; Zhijian Huang; Wenjing Ma; Shuting Gao; Wei Dong; Min Xu

doi:10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118767

Green and sustainable cellulose-based shape memory composites with excellent conductivity for temperature warning

Carbohydr Polym. 2022 Jan 15:276:118767. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118767. Epub 2021 Oct 16.

Authors

Zhicheng Jiang¹, Yanling Wang¹, Zhijian Huang¹, Wenjing Ma², Shuting Gao², Wei Dong¹, Min Xu³

Affiliations

¹ School of Physics and Electronic Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.
² Joint Laboratory of Advanced Biomedical Materials (NFU-UGent), College of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University (NFU), Nanjing 210037, China.
³ School of Physics and Electronic Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China. Electronic address: xumin@phy.ecnu.edu.cn.

PMID: 34823787
DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118767

Abstract

Green and sustainable cellulose-based composites containing poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) with temperature-induced shape memory properties and conductivity performance are presented. The composites are fabricated by in situ polymerization of ε-caprolactone (ε-CL) monomer in three-dimensional porous cellulose gels, and then silver-porous cellulose gel/poly(ε-caprolactone) (Ag-Cell/PCL) composites are fabricated by depositing Ag onto the surface of porous cellulose gel/poly(ε-caprolactone) (Cell/PCL) composites. The addition of PCL not only improves the mechanical properties of the Cell/PCL composites but also endows them with excellent shape memory properties. The Cell/PCL composites exhibit a high shape-fixing rate (98.9%) and can recover to their original shape within 8 s without external force. In addition, the Ag-Cell/PCL composites show superior and stable conductivity under different bending angles. Finally, a temperature warning sensor with fast performance is successfully designed using Ag-Cell/PCL composites. This work provides a means to develop temperature warning systems based on shape memory polymers.

Keywords: Conductivity; Mechanical properties; Porous cellulose gels; Shape memory polymers; Temperature warning sensor.