Degeneration and damage mechanism of epoxy-based shape memory polymer under 1 MeV electron irradiation

The degradation behaviors of epoxy-based shape memory polymer (SMP) after 1 MeV electron irradiation were investigated in the paper. It was founded that the shape fixity rate remained almost no changed at approximately 99.6% while the shape recovery rate decreased rapidly from its original 98.6% to 85.9% with increasing fluence up to 200 × 1014 cm−2, which could be owned to the partial cleavage of the crosslinked network of epoxy-based SMP after irradiation. Further research found that the irradiation-induced scissions of the crosslinked network took place as a result of the debonding of the weak aliphatic C-O and C-N groups.