UV-Cured Transparent Silicone Materials with High Tensile Strength Prepared from Hyperbranched Silicon-Containing Polymers and Polyurethane-Acrylates

Abstract

Flexibility and mechanical performance are essential for transparent silicone materials applied in some optical and electronic devices; however, the tensile strength of transparent silicone materials is fairly low. To overcome this problem, a kind of UV-cured transparent flexible silicone material with quite a high tensile strength and elongation at break was developed through UV-initiated thiol− ene reaction by hyperbranched silicon-containing polymers (HBPs) with a thiol substitute and acrylate-terminated polyurethanes. Unexpectedly, it is found that both the tensile strength and elongation at break of the transparent silicone materials are extraordinarily high, which can reach 3.40 MPa and 270.0%, respectively. The UV-cured materials have good UV resistance ability because their transmittance is still as high as 93.4% (800 nm) even when aged for 40 min in a UV chamber of 10.6 mW cm −2 . They exhibit outstanding adhesion to substrates, and the adhesion to a glass slide, wood, and a tin plate is grade 1. The promising results encourage us to further improve the mechanical performance of flexible transparent silicone materials by effective chemical modification strategies with HBPs. An attempt was made to apply the UV-cured materials in a Gel-Pak box and it could be proved that the UV-cured materials may be one of the good candidates for use as packaging or protecting materials of optical or electronics devices such as the Gel-Pak product.

High Tensile Strength UV-Cured Castor Oil-Based Silicone-Modified Polyurethane Acrylates

“…The pencil hardness of UV-cured materials increased from 2 to 9 H, while water absorption decreased from 1.5 to 0.5 wt % when the UV curing time was prolonged from 10 to 60 s, which implies that the curing degree and cross-link density increased with the prolongation of time. 7 An UV curing time longer than 60 s will almost have no effect on the materials obtained.…”

“… 2 , 11 However, the mechanical performance and chemical resistance of UV-cured PUAs are limited by the low density and inadequate photosensitive groups of the linear PUA oligomers. 12 Because high tensile strength transparent materials are highly desired in optical devices, 7 , 13 , 14 efforts should be devoted to develop high tensile strength transparent PUAs.…”

“…Recently, our group prepared UV-cured transparent silicone-modified PUAs with a fairly high tensile strength of 3.40 MPa from hyperbranched silicon-containing polymers and petroleum-based PUAs 7 and castor oil-based highly transparent UV-cured silicone-modified PUAs by silicon resins with tensile strength as high as 10.20 MPa. 31 Although highly transparent UV-cured silicone-containing PUAs with fairly high tensile strength were reported by our group previously, the development of new biomass-based silicone-modified UV-cured PUAs with outstanding mechanical performance is still worthy of pursuit.…”

“… 31 Although highly transparent UV-cured silicone-containing PUAs with fairly high tensile strength were reported by our group previously, the development of new biomass-based silicone-modified UV-cured PUAs with outstanding mechanical performance is still worthy of pursuit. Inspired by these works, 7 , 31 high tensile strength, transparent, UV-cured, castor oil-based silicone-modified PUAs were prepared by a UV-initiated thiol-ene click reaction of castor oil-based UV-cured PUAs and HBPSHs. The fabrication and performance of these UV-cured PUAs were investigated in detail.…”

Nanopatterned Polymer Molds Using Anodized Aluminum Templates for Anti-Reflective Coatings

“…Polymer-based materials have attracted considerable attention due to their flexibility, hydrophobicity, and universal applicability [ 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ]. Several studies have been conducted around the development of novel polymer layers, including poly(methyl methacrylate) coatings to enhance the light amplification of perovskite films [ 26 ] and superamphiphobic properties of silica-fluoropolymer coating layer [ 27 ].…”