The Polymer Society of Korea

Abstract

The design and fabrication of responsive hydrogels with reversible shape morphing and tunable actuation speed have been of great interest. In this talk, I will discuss our recent progress in approaches to integrate functional materials into stimuli-responsive hydrogels. These approaches provide insights into how the presence of functional additives and physical interactions between the additives and hydrogel networks can lead to different internal structures, and thus mechanical properties. Next, I will describe how we have leveraged these insights to precisely program the 3D shapes and control the swelling-deswelling kinetics by external stimuli, and tune the mechanical properties. Such stimuli-responsive shape morphing systems of hydrogels will allow us to understand their structure-property relationships and utilize these systems for applications ranging from soft robotics to biomedical devices.