Biomimetic Impact Protective Supramolecular Polymeric Materials Enabled by Quadruple H-Bonding

Abstract

Nature has been inspiring scientists to fabricate impact protective materials for applications in various aspects. However, it is still challenging to integrate flexible, stiffness-changeable, and protective properties into a single polymer, although these merits are of great interest in many burgeoning areas. Herein, we report an impact-protective supramolecular polymeric material (SPM) with unique impact-hardening and reversible stiffness-switching characteristics by mimicking sea cucumber dermis. The emergence of softness−stiffness switchability and subsequent protective properties relies on the dynamic aggregation of the nanoscale hard segments in soft transient polymeric networks modulated by quadruple H-bonding. As such, we demonstrate that our SPM could efficiently reduce the impact force and increase the buffer time of the impact. Importantly, we elucidate the underlying mechanism behind the impact hardening and energy dissipation in our SPM. Based on these findings, we fabricate impact-and puncture-resistant demos to show the potential of our SPM for protective applications.

Polymer Topology Reinforced Synergistic Interactions among Nanoscale Molecular Clusters for Impact Resistance with Facile Processability and Recoverability

“…Elastic moduli are determined to be 1045, 1344, 1507 and 2040 MPa at strain rates of 350, 500, 1000 and 1800 s −1 , respectively, ca. 4 orders of magnitude increasement compared to quasi‐static elastic moduli, which suggests the characteristics of the high strain‐rate dependence (Figure S20) [20] . The nonlinear response behaviors may be associated with the jamming phenomenon among the spatially confined OPOSS units, which could resemble the colloidal suspensions with unique shear thickening properties [21] .…”

“…4 orders of magnitude increasement compared to quasi-static elastic moduli, which suggests the characteristics of the high strain-rate dependence (Figure S20). [20] The nonlinear response behaviors may be associated with the jamming phenomenon among the spatially confined OPOSS units, which could resemble the colloidal suspensions with unique shear thickening properties. [21] The reprocessed specimens are verified to exhibit close impactresistant properties to the original sample (Figure 3 d, Supplementary movie file 4 and 5).…”

Codes in Code: AIE Supramolecular Adhesive Hydrogels Store Huge Amounts of Information

“…[ 56 ] It can be seen from the SEM images that they all had a network structure (Figure S5, Supporting Information), which verified the formation of a cross‐linked structure. [ 57,58 ] Tensile experiments (Figure S6 and Movie S1, Supporting Information) shown that the fracture strain values of hydrogels G1 , G2 , and G3 were severally 135%, 170%, and 151%, and thus have certain mechanical strength. [ 59,60 ] In addition, it can be seen from the fluorescence spectra (Figure S7, Supporting Information) that the emission wavelengths of the three hydrogels G1 , G2 , and G3 were 653, 565, and 439 nm, indicating that they respectively displayed red, yellow, and blue fluorescence.…”

Structure and impact properties of a thermoplastic elastomer/silly putty blend

“…6,7 Present impact-resistant materials are mainly lightweight polymer materials. 8,9 Recently, a new generation of impact-resistant materials has adopted polyborosiloxane (PBS) as an active component to dissipate impact energy. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] PBS is a kind of supramolecular polymer with boron-oxygen dynamic dative bonds (Si-O:B), [20][21][22] which endow PBS with unique viscoelasticity.…”