Thiol-ene chemistry incorporates a new spiropyran-containing polyurethane ionogel with photochromic, photomechanical and photoconductive properties

The photocuring technology based on thiol-ene click reaction can be easily applied for copolymerizing or crosslinking the acrylate monomers for ionogels. However, there is still a problem: when the acrylate monomers contain the popular spiropyran as the stimuli-responsive group, it should be concerned about the participation of the active C00000000000000000000000000000000111111110000000011111111000000000000000000000000C bond from the ring-opened spiropyran during a thiol-ene reaction, which may in turn affect the stimuli-responsiveness of the spiropyran. Up to now, the structure and properties of spiropyran-containing ionogels in this case have still not been well investigated. Therefore, in this work we carefully study a new spiropyran-containing polyurethane ionogel by crosslinking an acrylate-terminated, spiropyran-containing polyurethane prepolymer and a polythiol in ionic liquid through thiol-ene chemistry. It is found for the first time that, during constructing an ionogel, the coexistence of a reversible thiol-ene reaction between the CC bond from the ring-opened spiropyran and the thiol group can bring about a different reverse photochromic behavior. The proposed mechanism of the abnormal photochromism is analyzed. In addition, it is also observed that the thiol-ene chemistry can incorporate photomechanical and photoconductive properties into the new spiropyran-containing ionogel. A new spiropyran-containing ionogel with photochromic, photomechanical and photoconductive properties is prepared through thiol-ene chemistry.