Thermo-reversible reactions for the preparation of smart materials: recyclable covalently-crosslinked shape memory polymers

[4+2] thermoreversible Diels-Alder cycloaddition has been used to crosslink star-shaped poly(ε-caprolactone) in order to produce networks based on strong carbon-carbon covalent bondings. Depending on the nature of the Diels-Alder reactants, these bonds can be thermoreversibly broken, allowing re-processing of the polymer matrix