Tough, Transparent, Photocurable Hybrid Elastomers

Anthony J. Silvaroli, Tyler R. Heyl, Zhe Qiang, Jeremy M. Beebe, Dongchan Ahn, Shane Mangold, Kenneth R. Shull*, Muzhou Wang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigated polydimethylsiloxane/poly(methyl methacrylate) (PDMS/PMMA) interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) by both sequential and simultaneous syntheses. In the sequential IPN, the PDMS network was first thermally cured after which methyl methacrylate was swelled in and UV photopolymerized in situ. The simultaneous IPN consists of a one-pot, single-step UV cure of both components. Pure shear fracture and tensile tests were used to extract the Young's modulus, critical fracture strain, and fracture energy of the materials at varying PMMA fractions (up to 50 wt %). At high PMMA fractions, a maximum increase in Young's modulus (42×) and fracture energy (21×) was observed with little sacrifice in the optical properties and the extensibility of notched samples. The Krieger-Dougherty model for particle reinforcement was fit to the modulus data as a function of the PMMA fraction and showed good agreement. The optical properties and microstructure of the IPNs were investigated by UV-visible light transmission, small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). As the weight fraction of PMMA increased, the simultaneous IPN became less transparent, while the sequential material showed the opposite trend. In the sequential IPN, the minority phase size decreased with increasing PMMA fraction, while it was constant for the simultaneous IPN. Therefore, it was concluded that the sequential IPN transparency is controlled by the size of the PMMA domains, but the simultaneous IPN transparency is controlled by the PMMA fraction. SAXS and AFM also showed evidence of bicontinuous network formation in the simultaneous IPN, which may affect the optical and mechanical properties.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)44125-44136
Number of pages12
JournalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Volume12
Issue number39
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 30 2020

Funding

Portions of this work were performed at the DuPont-Northwestern-Dow Collaborative Access Team (DND-CAT) located at Sector 5 of the Advanced Photon Source (APS). DND-CAT is supported by Northwestern University, The Dow Chemical Company, and DuPont de Nemours, Inc. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by the Argonne National Laboratory under Contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. We would like to thank Prof. Jeffrey Richards for his guidance with SAXS data analysis, and Dr. Steven Weigand for his help collecting the SAXS data. We would also like to thank Dr. Shawn Chen for his help with the fracture analysis and testing protocol. The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from Dow through the University Partnership Initiative.

Keywords

  • IPN
  • PDMS
  • SAXS
  • bicontinuous
  • elastomer
  • fracture
  • toughness
  • transparent

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Materials Science

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