Molecularly Engineered Unparalleled Strength and Supertoughness of Poly(urea‐urethane) with Shape Memory and Clusterization‐Triggered Emission

• DOI: 10.1002/adma.202205763
• Publication Date: 2022-09-14T21:58:37Z
• Authors: Xiaoyue Wang; Jing Xu; Xinrui Zhang; Zenghui Yang; Yaoming Zhang; Tingmei Wang; Qihua Wang
• Keywords: Elongation

To address the challenge of realizing multifunctional polymers simultaneously exhibiting high strength and toughness through molecular engineering, ultrastrong supertough shape-memory poly(urea-urethane) (PUU) is fabricated by regulating: i) reversible cross-links composed rigid units multiple hydrogen bonds, ii) weight soft segments. The optimal material exhibits an unparalleled 84.2 MPa at a large elongation break 925.6%, superior 322.8 MJ m-3 , remarkable fatigue resistance without fracture. repeated stretching this induces irreversible deformation, which, however, can be rapidly recovered heating. Moreover, all samples are capable temporary shape fixation -40 °C (recovering original 30 °C) exhibit blue fluorescence when excited optimum wavelength, which ascribed to clusterization-triggered emission (CTE) due formation microphase-separation structures. Thus, adopted approach provides solution long-standing problem paves way realization intrinsically luminescent materials both ultrahigh toughness.