光応答性の分子スイッチによる接着・脱着の光制御

抄録

Photoswitchable adhesives are expected to contribute to material recycling for a sustainable future as complex architectures composed of dissimilar materials are being developed in various fields, because they enable both robust bonding during use and on-demand photoinduced debonding after use with minimal damage to the adherends due to the advantages of light, i.e., high spatiotemporal resolution, easy and precise control of the wavelength and intensity, and no generation of chemical waste. In this review, we highlight photoswitchable adhesives of small molecules and polymers based on photoisomerization of molecular switches. It has been about a decade since the first paper was reported using azobenzene. Although a huge variety of photoswitches are known and widely used, only four of them, azobenezene, diarylethene, spiropyran, and donor–acceptor Stenhouse adducts, have been employed in photoswitchable adhesives. Here, we discuss them separately with respect to each photoswitch. We hope this review provides useful information, inspiration, and ideas for the development of the field.