State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering & Center for Advanced Low-dimension Materials, Donghua University, 2999 North Renmin Road, Shanghai, 201620, China.
Jülich Centre for Neutron Science (JCNS) at Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ) Forschungszentrum Jülich, Lichtenbergstr. 1, 85748, Garching, Germany.
Adv Mater. 2023 Mar;35(10):e2209581. doi: 10.1002/adma.202209581. Epub 2023 Jan 20.
Shock-induced low-frequency vibration damage is extremely harmful to bionic soft robots and machines that may incur the malfunction of fragile electronic elements. However, current skin-like self-healable ionic elastomers as the artificial sensing and protecting layer still lack the ability to dampen vibrations, due to their almost opposite design for molecular frictions to material's elasticity. Inspired by the two-phase structure of adipose tissue (the natural damping skin layer), here, a highly damping ionic elastomer with energy-dissipating nanophases embedded in an elastic matrix is introduced, which is formed by polymerization-induced dynamic phase separation of sticky fluorinated copolymers in the presence of lithium salts. Such a supramolecular design decouples the elastic and damping functions into two distinct phases, and thus reconciles a few intriguing properties including ionic conductivity, high stretchability, softness, strain-stiffening, elastic recovery, room-temperature self-healability, recyclability, and most importantly, record-high damping capacity at the human motion frequency range (loss factor tan δ > 1 at 0.1-50 Hz). This study opens the door for the artificial syntheses of high-performance damping ionic skins with robust sensing and protective applications in soft electronics and robotics.
冲击引起的低频振动损伤对仿生软机器人和机器极其有害，可能导致脆弱的电子元件发生故障。然而，目前用作人工感应和保护层的类似皮肤的自修复离子弹性体由于其分子摩擦与材料弹性几乎相反的设计，仍然缺乏减振能力。受脂肪组织（天然减振皮肤层）的两相结构的启发，在这里，引入了一种具有耗散纳米相的高阻尼离子弹性体，它是通过粘性氟化共聚物在存在锂盐的情况下聚合诱导动态相分离形成的弹性基体。这种超分子设计将弹性和阻尼功能解耦到两个不同的相，从而协调了一些有趣的特性，包括离子导电性、高拉伸性、柔软性、应变硬化、弹性恢复、室温自修复性、可回收性，以及最重要的是，在人体运动频率范围内具有创纪录的高阻尼能力（损耗因子 tan δ> 0.1-50 Hz 时为 1）。这项研究为具有强大传感和保护功能的高性能阻尼离子皮肤的人工合成开辟了道路，可应用于软电子产品和机器人技术。
