TY - JOUR
T1 - Highly Transparent and Tough Filler Composite Elastomer Inspired by the Cornea
AU - Watanabe, Kenta
AU - Miwa, Eiji
AU - Asai, Fumio
AU - Seki, Takahiro
AU - Urayama, Kenji
AU - Nakatani, Tomotaka
AU - Fujinami, So
AU - Hoshino, Taiki
AU - Takata, Masaki
AU - Liu, Chang
AU - Mayumi, Koichi
AU - Ito, Kohzo
AU - Takeoka, Yukikazu
N1 - Funding Information:
Y.T. acknowledges the support of ImPACT for the project “Realizing an Ultrathin and Flexible Tough Polymer”. All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the supplementary materials. Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the authors.
PY - 2020/4/6
Y1 - 2020/4/6
N2 - We propose a strategy to develop a colorless, transparent, and tough composite elastomer inspired by the cornea, which is the transparent front portion of the eyeball. The composite elastomer, in which 34 vol »% hard silica particles with a uniform particle size are dispersed as a filler in a low-crosslinking polymer network exhibits a fracture energy that is ∼13.5 times higher than that of a system without the silica particles. This strategy also makes the elastomer optically transparent, because the light scattered by each silica particle that forms an ordered structure in the polymer network is cancelled by interference. This research may pave the way for the development of optically transparent and durable materials for applications such as advanced medical devices and soft robots.
AB - We propose a strategy to develop a colorless, transparent, and tough composite elastomer inspired by the cornea, which is the transparent front portion of the eyeball. The composite elastomer, in which 34 vol »% hard silica particles with a uniform particle size are dispersed as a filler in a low-crosslinking polymer network exhibits a fracture energy that is ∼13.5 times higher than that of a system without the silica particles. This strategy also makes the elastomer optically transparent, because the light scattered by each silica particle that forms an ordered structure in the polymer network is cancelled by interference. This research may pave the way for the development of optically transparent and durable materials for applications such as advanced medical devices and soft robots.
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U2 - 10.1021/acsmaterialslett.9b00520
DO - 10.1021/acsmaterialslett.9b00520
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85083861000
VL - 2
SP - 325
EP - 330
JO - ACS Materials Letters
JF - ACS Materials Letters
SN - 2639-4979
IS - 4
ER -