Intrinsically Photopolymerizable Dynamic Polymers Derived from a Natural Small Molecule

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces Vol. 13; no. 37; pp. 44860 - 44867
• Main Authors: Shi, Chen-Yu, Zhang, Qi, Wang, Bang-Sen, Chen, Meng, Qu, Da-Hui
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 22.09.2021
• Subjects: Applications of Polymer, Composite, and Coating Materials; depolymerization; disulfides; irradiation; light; lipoic acid; polymers; dynamic covalent chemistry; supramolecular materials; disulfides; photopolymerization; dynamic materials
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c11679

Developing photopolymerizable polymeric materials offers many opportunities to process materials in a remote and controllable manner. However, most photopolymerizable technologies require the external introduction of photoabsorbing units, whereas designing intrinsically photopolymerizable polymers is still highly challenging. Here, we report that a natural small-molecule disulfide, thioctic acid, can be directly transformed into a poly­(disulfides) network under the irradiation of visible light without any external additives. The resulting polymer network exhibits optical transparency, mechanical stretchability and toughness, ambient self-healing ability, and especially strong adhesive ability to different surfaces. The dynamic covalent backbones of the poly­(disulfides) endow the depolymerization ability to recycle the material in a closed-loop manner. We foresee that this facile and robust photopolymerization system is of great promise toward low-cost and high-performance photocuring coatings and adhesives.