Mechanics of elastomeric molecular composites.

A classic paradigm of soft and extensible polymer materials is the difficulty of combining reversible elasticity with high fracture toughness, in particular for moduli above 1 MPa. Our recent discovery of multiple network acrylic elastomers opened a pathway to obtain precisely such a combination. We show here that they can be seen as true molecular composites with a well-cross-linked network acting as a percolating filler embedded in an extensible matrix, so that the stress-strain curves of a family of molecular composite materials made with different volume fractions of the same cross-linked network can be renormalized into a master curve.

Interactions affecting the mechanical properties of macromolecular microsphere composite hydrogels.

Macromolecular microsphere composite (MMC) hydrogel is a kind of tough hydrogel fabricated by using peroxidized macromolecular microspheres as polyfunctional initiating and cross-linking centers (PFICC). The contribution of chemical cross-linking (covalent bonding) and physical cross-linking (chain entanglement and hydrogen bonding) to the mechanical properties are understood by testing the hydrogels, which were swollen in water or aqueous urea solutions to different water contents. The as-prepared MMC gels exhibited moderate moduli (60-270 kPa), high fracture tensile stresses (up to 0.

Polymer entanglement density and its influence on interfacial friction.

The entanglement density of amorphous glassy polymers is well known to control their fracture mechanisms under tensile loading. There have been some reports indicating substantial deformation of a glassy polymer's surface region when exposed to interfacial friction. It is shown conclusively here that there is a direct correlation between the entanglement density of a glassy polymer and the deformation mechanisms that facilitate sliding friction.

Chain entanglement in thin freestanding polymer films.

When a thin glassy film is strained uniaxially, a shear deformation zone (SDZ) can be observed. The ratio of the thickness of the SDZ to that of the undeformed film is related to the maximum extension ratio, lambda, which depends on the entanglement molecular weight, M(e). We have measured lambda as a function of film thickness in strained freestanding films of polystyrene as a probe of M(e) in confinement.

Effects of contact time and polarity level on adhesion between interacting surfaces.

We have measured the rate at which adhesion develops between two surfaces that interact by hydrogen bonding. A poly(dimethylsiloxane) elastomer lens with a slightly oxidized surface was pushed against a polystyrene-based copolymer substrate that contained acid groups. The interaction was measured on both forming and breaking the contact using the JKR technique.