What is it about?
Toughness is a key performance metric for polymers. It measures in a sense the amount of abuse a polymer can take before breaking. Sticky groups are a way of introducing new interactions in a polymer to guide the toughness.
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Why is it important?
We show that not just the strength of interaction is important. Instead using weak sticky bonds with low barriers to rupture increase toughness under high strain rates. The implication is that toughness has to be tuned to use-cases considering both the kinetics and thermodynamics of the sticky mechanism. This is particularly useful for high-performance glassy networks.
Perspectives
Single parameter materials are too simple to exhibit complex behavior that many real-world problems require. Finding ways to combine and mix the various strengths and even weaknesses of constituent materials will be a key enabler of new materials technologies. Interpenetrating networks and gels are just some examples. Here we add another dimension of prescribed bond-breakage, which is counterintuitive; in order for the material to be tough bonds have to be weakened.
Dr Berend C Rinderspacher
US ARL
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Nonlinear mechanics of thermoreversibly associating dendrimer glasses, Physical Review E, October 2013, American Physical Society (APS),
DOI: 10.1103/physreve.88.042607.
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