Developing high-performance elastomers will not only benefits its current applications like building technologies, automotive and cable coating but also be meaningful in their potential applications including wearable bio-signal monitor, stretchable monitors and battery. The current paradigm of elastomer design is the trade-off between the stiffness and extensibility, which are the two key contributors to toughness. Here, we demonstrated that Young’s modulus and extensibility can be simultaneously enhanced by introducing rationally arranged ureidopyrimidone (UPy) units, leading to significantly improved toughness. By tuning the distribution of UPy units along the polymer chains, the formation of UPy clusters as well as the resulted Young’s modulus can be effectively modulated without affecting the extensibility, which shows great advantage over conventional approaches. We also proposed the dynamic processes during stretching process supported with clear experimental evidence. With similar strategy, we also developed a series of highly recyclable elastic networks with associative dynamic bonds lying at the polymer backbone. The obtained elastic network shows superior mechanical performance than most of the commercially available elastic networks, like Sylgard and Ecoflex. They can be reprocessed more than 5 times without sacrificing mechanical parameters, including tensile strength and extensibility. Moreover, the elastic network can be used for the fabrication of stretchable sensor, in which the functionality can be completely recovered.

Surpass the modulus- extensibility trade-off of elastomers: Go beyond the state-of-art

ACS Spring 2022

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