Smart Polyurethane Shape Memory Polymers

Shape memory polymers (SMPs) possess a unique property of retaining their original shapes upon external stimulation and have been widely used in engineering, space exploration and particularly in medical devices. Polyurethane based SMPs (SMPUs) are an emerging class of this types of smart materials. This book shows methods to synthesize various polyurethane SMPUs with tailored thermomechanical and shape memory properties by uisng various polyol soft segments and combinations of diisocyanides hard segments, and presents a formula to synthsize reprocessable and recyclable SMPUs which allows recycling of end-of-life SMPU products in industrial scale and can significantly reduce the impact of polymer wastes to the worsening environments. Finally the book proposes novel SMPU based medical compression bandages for ulcer leg treatments and demonstrates their feasibility for the applications.