No abstract

Polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) as a frontier organic/inorganic hybrid material with multiple structures has exhibited great potential in robust property extension in the past decade because of its stable cage structure and flexible modification. Recent research on the design strategies of modifying T8‐POSS and various T8‐POSS deviations has inspired the emergence of multidisciplinary applications. In this review, we describe the most common synthetic methods of T8‐POSS, including monofunctional and octafunctional POSS deviations, and then discuss some frequently combined groups' properties, such as POSS‐cyclodextrin, POSS‐azobenzene, base‐pair ending POSS and POSS‐copolymer, and classify them based on their self‐assembly driving force. Moreover, these designations serve as advanced interactive machines with humans, including drug delivery systems, fluorescent probes, sensors and stretchable devices. Finally, we describe the prospects and challenges of the application of the expansion of smart POSS interactive materials. © 2021 Society of Industrial Chemistry.

meet the requirement of bend or fold in most situations. But some devices like biomimetic epidermal electronics or implantable electronic devices need to adapt the large complex deformation of skins or biological tissues, which cause the idea that stretch ability is regarded as a key factor of designing devices. [10] And in the area of liquid display, traditional liquid crystal (LC) materials have been used in our life for so long time, but they could not be universally used in the deformable devices owing to their natural properties of flow and orderliness, and they are far more likely to flow to everywhere with no fixed shape and show cluttered arrangement mode influenced by external force, much less the application in stretchable devices.To overcome this weakness of LC mole cules, gelators are added to firm the LC molecules' shapes through 3D gel net work, finally developing a new special kind of soft materials which exhibit both LC materials' advantages and gels' unique natures including flowability, mechanical behavior, heat stability, and so on. Considering LC materials have diverse stim uliresponsive properties [11][12][13] and many device applications such as LC gratings, [14] polymerstabilized blue phase (PSBP) I film, [15] or multiresponsive composite films, [16] the combina tion of LC materials and gels will help create more possibili ties to prepare multifunctional materials and devices. Previous study results [17] have shown that LC gel would produce vast transmittance differences through the transformation between light scattering and light transmission by LC molecules' stim uliresponsive properties such as photoresponse, electrore sponse, temperature response, and magnetic response. [14,[18][19][20][21][22] And this method could greatly simplify the LC devices' struc ture by abandoning the use of Polaroid. For example, Jang and coworkers [23] reported a light scattering display using dendritic physical gel. Kato and coworkers [24][25][26] had prepared various rigid light scattering cells. Levy and coworkers [27] made a huge and rigid electrooptical window based on liquidcrystal disper sions in sol-gel matrices. Xie and coworkers [28] prepared LC gels through the selfassembly of sorbitol derivatives as gela tors in 5CB, showing its potential application in selfsupporting lightscattering electrooptical displays. Zhao and coworkers [29,30] reported a fluorescent LC gels and shown a high contrast of photoluminescence. In general, these light scattering LC devices all present rigid condition and have the features of A stretchable, flexible electroresponsive liquid-crystal (LC) device with extremely simple structure is reported. It exhibits excellent light-transmission control even during successive 45% stretching, which is due to the combination of a super-strong LC gel network (5CB/POSS-G1-BOC) and transparent conductive electrodes composed of silver nanowires (AgNWs) embedded in polyurethane (PU). The uniaxial tensile deformation mechanism of the gel network is also explained by the uniform distributi...

The integration of mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs) into purely organic crystalline materials is expected to produce materials with properties that are not accessible using more classic approaches. To date, this integration has proved elusive. We present a dative boron–nitrogen bond-driven self-assembly strategy that allows for the preparation of polyrotaxane crystals. The polyrotaxane nature of the crystalline material was confirmed by both single-crystal x-ray diffraction analysis and cryogenic high-resolution low-dose transmission electron microscopy. Enhanced softness and greater elasticity are seen for the polyrotaxane crystals than for nonrotaxane polymer controls. This finding is rationalized in terms of the synergetic microscopic motion of the rotaxane subunits. The present work thus highlights the benefits of integrating MIMs into crystalline materials.

An amazing phenomenon of the relative magnitude of modulus of two liquid-crystal( LC) gels is found inverted under/abovet heir phase transition temperature T LC-iso , which is further provedt ob ecaused by their diversem orphologyf lexibility.B yt esting the polarity of two LCs, gelator POSS-G1-Boc (POSS = polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane) was discovered to self-assemble into more flexible structures in ar elatively low polar LC, whereasm ore rigid ones are formed in higherp olar LC. Hence, af itting functiont oc onnect morphology flexibility with solvent polarityw as established,w hich can even be generalized to an umber of common solvents. Experimental observations and coarsegrained molecular dynamics simulations revealed that solvent polarity mirrors a" Morsec ode", with each "code" corresponding to aspecificm orphologyf lexibility.