Creation of Shape-memory Gels with Inter-crosslinking Network Structure

Medical treatments in emergency should be simple and quick. Although bandages and plaster are commonly used to wrap and fix external injuries, these treatments are too simple to treat the injuries effectively. Smart materials could possibly add multiple beneficial functions to the bandages and plaster, such as cooling, shape memory, transparence, and recycling. Here, we propose novel high-strength shape-memory gels as smart medical materials. The gels are composed of several polymers of a unique structure, where the crosslinking forms covalent bonds solely between different polymers. We named this structure inter-crosslinking network (ICN), with gels becoming tough while having a high water content. The ICN gels achieve a high ductility, i.e., over 740% strain in tensile tests. The ICN gels retain their original shapes at the state of preparation, show plastic deformation at room temperature, and quickly recover to their original shape by heating only.