New material offers remarkable combo of toughness and stretchiness

New materials created by researchers are very tough.

The co-corresponding author of a paper on the work says that materials that are difficult to break or tear are desirable. Engineering synthetic materials with these properties has been difficult.

The new materials are part of the broader category of ionogels, which are networks of salts that are liquid at room temperature. The salts are called ionic liquids.

ionogels that are 70% liquid have remarkable mechanical properties. They are very difficult to break because they can lose a lot of energy when you change them. They are easy to make and can be 3D printed.

Hydrogels are networks that contain water. Ionogels have advantages over hydrogels. You don't have to worry about the ionogels drying out because ionized liquids don't evaporate like water. Ionogels are stable and conduct electricity well, raising some interesting opportunities for future applications.

The researchers started with polyacrylic acid and polyacrylamide and used ultraviolet light to make the new ionogels. They took the ingredients for polyacrylic acid and polyacrylamide, placed them in an ionic liquid, and shone light on it to create a copolymer that incorporated both the monomers and the liquid itself.

The end result is better than the average of the two materials. The gel is even stronger than the polyacrylamide because of the stretchability of polyacrylic acid. It is better in terms of strength. The differences between ionogels and hydrogels make them good for different applications.

The ionogels created by the team have self-healing and shape memory properties. You can expose the ionogel to heat and reform it. When exposed to heat, the ionogel will return to its original shape, even if you change it into a temporary new shape. The amount of heat needed depends on how quickly you want the material to heal or return to its normal shape. The actions only take a short time when the temperature is 60 degrees.

We are excited that we have made something with truly remarkable properties that can be made very easily using widely available materials.

We are open to working with others to develop applications for this new breed of ionogels.

Nature Materials has a paper on tough and stretchable ionogels. The first author of the paper is a researcher at NC State who has an affiliation with a Chinese university. The paper was co-authored by several people, including a student at NC State, a researcher at NC State, and a visiting scholar at NC State.

More information: Jian Hu, Tough and stretchable ionogels by in situ phase separation, Nature Materials (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01195-4. www.nature.com/articles/s41563-022-01195-4 Journal information: Nature Materials Citation: New material offers remarkable combo of toughness and stretchiness (2022, February 21) retrieved 21 February 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-02-material-remarkable-combo-toughness-stretchiness.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.