{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,9]],"date-time":"2026-10-09T16:40:13Z","timestamp":1791564013390,"version":"4.3.4"},"reference-count":50,"publisher":"Oxford University Press (OUP)","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,28]],"date-time":"2025-02-28T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1740700800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":1,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["52322306"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["52322306"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["22275032"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["22275032"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["52433003"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["52433003"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Shanghai Talent Development Fund","award":["2021021"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2021021"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,3,7]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>ABSTRACT<\/jats:title>\n               <jats:p>Thermal-stiffening hydrogels exhibit a dramatic soft-to-stiff transition upon heating, making them ideal candidates for temperature-triggered self-protection and shape memory applications. However, their practical use is still hampered by a slow recovery process (generally &amp;gt;30\u00a0min) during cooling, attributed to sluggish mass diffusion and delayed phase dissolution. Herein, we present a high-entropy phase separation design to significantly accelerate the recovery dynamics of these materials. We demonstrate this concept using a thermal-stiffening poly(calcium acrylate)-based copolymer hydrogel by incorporating hydrophilic units. Mechanistically, the hydrophilic units disrupt the dense packing of thermal-stiffening clusters, creating a high-entropy topological structure with a low energy barrier for rapid mass diffusion. This approach retains the impressive thermal-stiffening response with a 760-fold increase in storage modulus, while dramatically reducing the characteristic recovery time to merely 28\u00a0s. We anticipate this high-entropy strategy to be broadly applicable in designing modulus-adaptive materials with fast switching dynamics.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/nsr\/nwaf072","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,3,4]],"date-time":"2025-03-04T21:36:28Z","timestamp":1741124188000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":31,"title":["High-entropy thermal-stiffening hydrogels with fast switching dynamics"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"12","author":[{"given":"Li","family":"Li","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Advanced Fiber Materials, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering & Center for Advanced Low-Dimension Materials, Donghua University , Shanghai 201620 ,","place":["China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Baohu","family":"Wu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"J\u00fclich Centre for Neutron Science (JCNS) at Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ) Forschungszentrum J\u00fclich , Garching 85748 ,","place":["Germany"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7471-686X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Shengtong","family":"Sun","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Advanced Fiber Materials, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering & Center for Advanced Low-Dimension Materials, Donghua University , Shanghai 201620 ,","place":["China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7235-210X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Peiyi","family":"Wu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Advanced Fiber Materials, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering & Center for Advanced Low-Dimension Materials, Donghua University , Shanghai 201620 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