TY - JOUR A1 - Mirtschin, Nikolaus A1 - Pretsch, Thorsten T1 - Designing temperature-memory effects in semicrystalline polyurethane N2 - Temperature-memory polymers are able to generate a substantial mechanical response when heated above the temperature, at which a preceding deformation was carried out. Here we show how to design the temperature-memory effect (TME) by thermomechanical treatment. As a model polymer, phase segregated poly(ester urethane) (PEU) containing crystallizable segments of poly(1,4-butylene adipate) (PBA) was used. For programming, strain elongation was applied at temperatures within the PBA melting transition area, before temperature holding, unloading and cooling were carried out. Upon heating under stress-free or constant strain recovery conditions, precisely set temperature-memory onsets could be witnessed. Most importantly, strain fixities and recoverabilities the same as maximum recovery stresses turned out to be controllable by strain rate and temperature holding time after deformation, while transition temperatures remained largely unaffected. The tailoring of thermoresponsiveness was structurally enabled by different PBA crystallinities in the programmed state as verified by wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS). The reported studies intend to design TMEs in semicrystalline polyurethanes according to user-defined needs to make this technology broadly applicable. KW - Poly(ester urethane) KW - Shape memory polymer KW - Temperature-memory effect KW - Thermo-responsiveness KW - Temperature-memory polymer KW - Programming KW - Thermomechanical properties PY - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-332856 SN - 2046-2069 VL - 5 IS - 57 SP - 46307 EP - 46315 PB - RSC Publishing CY - London AN - OPUS4-33285 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -