An elastomer with ultrahigh strain-induced crystallization

Chase M Hartquist; Shaoting Lin; James H Zhang; Shu Wang; Michael Rubinstein; Xuanhe Zhao

doi:10.1126/sciadv.adj0411

An elastomer with ultrahigh strain-induced crystallization

Sci Adv. 2023 Dec 15;9(50):eadj0411. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adj0411. Epub 2023 Dec 13.

Authors

Chase M Hartquist¹, Shaoting Lin¹, James H Zhang¹, Shu Wang¹, Michael Rubinstein^{2

3}, Xuanhe Zhao^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
² Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
³ Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
⁴ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Abstract

Strain-induced crystallization (SIC) prevalently strengthens, toughens, and enables an elastocaloric effect in elastomers. However, the crystallinity induced by mechanical stretching in common elastomers (e.g., natural rubber) is typically below 20%, and the stretchability plateaus due to trapped entanglements. We report a class of elastomers formed by end-linking and then deswelling star polymers with low defects and no trapped entanglements, which achieve strain-induced crystallinity of up to 50%. The deswollen end-linked star elastomer (DELSE) reaches an ultrahigh stretchability of 12.4 to 33.3, scaling beyond the saturated limit of common elastomers. The DELSE also exhibits a high fracture energy of 4.2 to 4.5 kJ m^-2 while maintaining low hysteresis. The heightened SIC and stretchability synergistically promote a high elastocaloric effect with an adiabatic temperature change of 9.3°C.

Abstract

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