Cavitation is the sudden formation and expansion of a void that may lead to both reversible and irreversible changes in soft materials. While this phenomenon has been studied extensively in simple fluids, there has been a lack of understanding of this process in soft solids which contain both structural components, such as the polymer network, and a mobile fluid phase. End-linked polymer networks swollen in solvent, such as hydrogels, have gained significant attention for their unique structural and mechanical properties that mimic natural materials and biological tissues. The elastic properties of gels, as imparted by the network architecture, are critically important to the performance of these soft materials under external stress. Failure of these polymer gels during mechanical deformations are intimately tied to the elastic properties in these materials. Synthetic and natural gels possess highly complex environments that contain defects and phase boundaries, and the interplay between these molecular structures and the mechanical responses remains an open question. Since the network structure is intimately related to material properties, it is important to have a molecular-level understanding of the dynamic behavior of the network during mechanical deformation. Coarse-grained molecular dynamics is used to investigate the response of swollen polymer networks to isotropic dilation and examine the connection between the local structure and the formation of cavities in the gel. Tensile deformation simulations are used to induce cavitation in model perfect diamond networks, realistic defect-containing networks, and phase separated networks as a function of the polymer concentration and strand length. Our results indicate that the local structure of the network is highly correlated with the formation of the cavities, and that the cavities tend to be confined to specific locations in the network and are not randomly distributed. Finally, network features that promote the formation of cavities are quantified.

Molecular response of end-linked polymer networks during cavitation deformation

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.