Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 January 2011
Although epoxy-based polymers remain infrequently used as shape memory polymers (SMP’s), they are a promising base material for highly demanding applications due to their intrinsic physical properties and ease of processing. A series of epoxy SMP’s was synthesized with varying mechanical properties and with glass transition temperatures ranging from 31 to 93 °C, tunable via the variations of the molecular structures. The influence of chemical structures and physical properties of these epoxy SMP’s on their shape memory (SM) behavior is examined in detail along with the impact of the shape memory cycling conditions. While the results show that lower crosslink densities and/or higher molecular flexibility/mobility leads decreased SM performance, at low crosslink density the effect of molecular flexibility/mobility becomes dominant in influencing the SM response.