Understanding the network change in reversible photochromic hydrogels

DOI

Photochromic devices are ones which change colour upon the irradiation of light. These devices can be used a sensors, logic gates and privacy windows etc. Here we show and example of a hydrogel that undergoes a reversible change from transparent to a dark brown colour upon the irradiation with UV light. An important feature of these hydrogels is that they do not fall apart upon multiple cycles of this irradiation, and whether the gel network has changed upon irradiation. So far we have studied this using rheology. The irradiated gels differ from the non-irradiated gels by a change in breakdown, telling us the bulk sample has changed. We will use SANS to probe the network changes in more detail, to see whether the fibre morphology has changed, or whether it is a bulk network change. We can also see how reversible this change is on the different levels of organization of the gel network.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.95670648
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/95670648
Provenance
Creator Dr Emily Draper; Dr Sarah Rogers; Professor Dave Adams
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2021
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Chemistry; Natural Sciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2018-07-08T08:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2018-07-10T08:00:00Z