Toughening Elastomers with Sacrificial Bonds and Watching Them Break

• DOI: 10.1126/science.1248494
• Publication Date: 2014-04-10T14:21:01Z
• Authors: Etienne Ducrot; Yulan Chen; Markus Bulters; Rint P. Sijbesma; Costantino Creton
• Keywords: Toughening

Toughening Up Elastomers are soft polymer materials widely used in industry and daily life. Inspired by recent work on double-network hydrogels, Ducrot et al. (p. 186 ; see the Perspective Gong ) designed interpenetrated network elastomers that contained isotropically prestretched chains as first network. Double- triple-network structures yielded with very high strength toughness comparison corresponding single networks.