Advances in Physiologically Relevant Actuation of Shape Memory Polymers for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

The synergistic effects of the combination of hyperthermia and chemotherapy have implicated the critical role of hyperthermia temperatures in clinical practice. Temperature sensitive polymers, which are capable of exhibiting controllable shapes under various temperature actuations, have attracted considerable interests for designing intelligent medical devices. While shape memory performances have been demonstrated with a wide range of temperatures, here we focus our discussion on shape memory polymers with physiologically relevant application temperatures and proper shape recovery speed. This review presents an overview of body-friendly thermo-responsive shape memory polymers, including commonly used biopolymers, various actuation methods, and their potential biomedical applications.

Keywords:

• Shape memory polymers
• actuation temperatures
• recovery speed
• physiologically relevant
• biomedical applications

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Key-Area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province (2019B010941001, QG), National Natural Science Foundation of China (81971764, QG), Guangdong Research Fund (2019ZT08Y191, QG), and the Startup Funding and High-Level University Development Funding from the Southern University of Science and Technology.