Highly elastic silicone foams, especially those with tunable property and multi-functionality, is of great interest in numerous fields. However, the liquid nature of silicone precursor and the complicated foaming process hinder the realization of its 3D printability. Herein, a series of silicone foam with outstanding performance in regards of elasticity, wetting and sensing properties, multi-functionality and tunability is generated by direct ink writing. Viscoelastic inks are achieved from direct dispersion of sodium chloride in a unique silicone precursor solution. The 3D-architectured silicone rubber exhibits open-celled trimodal porosity, which offers ultra-elasticity with hyper compressibility/cycling endurance (near-zero stress/strain loss under 90% compression or 1000 compression cycles), excellent stretchability (210% strain), and superhydrophobicity. The resulting foam is demonstrated to be multi-functional that it can work as oil sorbent with super capacity (1320%), and customizable soft sensor after absorption of carbon nanotube on the foam surface. The strategy enables tunability of mechanical strength, elasticity, stretchability, and absorbing capacity, while printing different materials together offers property gradients as an extra dimension of tunability. This study achieves the first 3D printed silicone foam, which serves an important step towards its application expansion.

3D-printed multifunctional, hyperelastic silicone rubber foam

2019 Fall National Meeting

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