Designing Supertough and Ultrastretchable Liquid Metal-Embedded Natural Rubber Composites for Soft-Matter Engineering
| Autor: | Gert Heinrich, Subhradeep Mandal, Amit Das, Anik Kumar Ghosh, Andreas Fery, Injamamul Arief, Jayant Kumar, Shib Shankar Banerjee, Petr Formanek, Ke Yang, Rama K. Layek |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Liquid metal
Toughness Materials science Soft robotics Vulcanization 02 engineering and technology 010402 general chemistry 021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology Elastomer 01 natural sciences 0104 chemical sciences law.invention Fracture toughness Natural rubber law visual_art visual_art.visual_art_medium General Materials Science Soft matter Composite material 0210 nano-technology |
| Zdroj: | ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. 13:15610-15620 |
| ISSN: | 1944-8252 1944-8244 |
| DOI: | 10.1021/acsami.1c00374 |
| Popis: | Functional elastomers with incredible toughness and stretchability are indispensable for applications in soft robotics and wearable electronics. Furthermore, coupled with excellent electrical and thermal properties, these materials are at the forefront of recent efforts toward widespread use in cutting-edge electronics and devices. Herein, we introduce a highly deformable eutectic-GaIn liquid metal alloy-embedded natural rubber (NR) architecture employing, for the first time, industrially viable solid-state mixing and vulcanization. Standard methods of rubber processing and vulcanization allow us to fragment and disperse liquid metals into submicron-sized droplets in cross-linked NR without compromising the elastic properties of the base matrix. In addition to substantial boosts in mechanical (strain at failure of up to ∼650%) and elastic (negligible hysteresis loss) performances, the tearing energy of the composite was enhanced up to 6 times, and a fourfold reduction in the crack growth rate was achieved over a control vulcanizate. Moreover, we demonstrate improved thermal conductivity and dielectric properties for the resulting composites. Therefore, this work provides a facile and scalable pathway to develop liquid metal-embedded soft elastomeric composites that could be instrumental toward potential applications in soft-matter engineering. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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