We propose a temperature- and strain-dependent small-angle/wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS/WAXS) experiment to investigate the mesoscopic scale structural change in a thermo-responsive hydrogel system under heating/cooling cycles or deformations. Our hydrogel can respond remarkably to both temperature and strain, resulting in striking macroscopic changes in transparency, whiteness, or colour. Such dynamic optical properties in the hydrogel are caused by the micromorphology change in the range of 10–300 nm, which can hardly be monitored by the in-house SAXS instrument due to the limitation of spatial and temporal resolution. Our research will provide new insights and fundamental understandings of the structure-property relationship between dynamic optical properties and micromorphology within thermos-responsive hydrogel systems.

2028