Elastic Polymer that is Both Stiff and Tough, Resolves Long-Standing Quandary

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Elastic polymer that is both stiff and tough, resolves long-standing quandary:

"In addition to developing polymers for emerging applications, scientists are facing an urgent challenge: Plastic pollution," said Zhigang Suo, the Allen E. and Marilyn M. Puckett Professor of Mechanics and Materials, the senior author of the study. "The development of biodegradable polymers has once again brought us back to fundamental questions-why are some polymers tough, but others brittle? How do we make polymers resist tearing under repeated stretching?"

Polymer chains are made by linking together monomer building blocks. To make a material elastic, the polymer chains are crosslinked by covalent bonds. The more crosslinks, the shorter the polymer chains and the stiffer the material.

"As your polymer chains become shorter, the energy you can store in the material becomes less and the material becomes brittle," said Junsoo Kim, a graduate student at SEAS and co-first author of the paper. "If you have only a few crosslinks, the chains are longer, and the material is tough but it's too squishy to be useful."

To develop a polymer that is both stiff and tough, the researchers looked to physical, rather than chemical bonds to link the polymer chains. These physical bonds, called entanglements, have been known in the field for almost as long as polymer science has existed, but they've been thought to only impact stiffness, not toughness.

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