Effect of crosslinker length and composition on the hydrophobicity and thermomechanical response of acrylate-based shape-memory polymers

This work provides data on these commercially available polymer formulations in a physiologically relevant environment involving temperature and water. Based on the results reported here, PEGDA systems would be good candidates for applications where large strains are applied andgreat recovery is needed.Weexpect such characteristics to be required in designing materials useful in vascular stent procedures. Other groups have used information about chain length or extension and functionality of groups to modify the temperature at which these systems transition to develop a switching temperature as opposed to a glass transition temperature.[41,48,49] Tailoring of these systems would enable finer control over material design but as demonstrated here, the relationship between chemical structures and physical properties is quite convoluted and necessitates systematic studies. Future works may require a closer examination of cellular viability in monolayer cultures and cytotoxicity.[50] Relationships should be etermined between macroscopic properties and recovery times with cycling, increasing crosslinker percentage,[32] and molecular weight.[49] Other current steps involve determining parameters for constitutive modeling,[21,51-54] 3D constitutive modeling,[55] and their incorporation into models for finite element analysis [53] for compressive and tensile applications. Additionally, while this paper focuses onlyontwo-shape SMPs, there also exist three-shape SMPs, which also require further investigation.^[56].