Highly Transparent and Tough Filler Composite Elastomer Inspired by the Cornea

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-cro...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inACS materials letters Vol. 2; no. 4; pp. 325 - 330
Main Authors Watanabe, Kenta, Miwa, Eiji, Asai, Fumio, Seki, Takahiro, Urayama, Kenji, Nakatani, Tomotaka, Fujinami, So, Hoshino, Taiki, Takata, Masaki, Liu, Chang, Mayumi, Koichi, Ito, Kohzo, Takeoka, Yukikazu
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published American Chemical Society 06.04.2020
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary: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.
ISSN:2639-4979
2639-4979
DOI:10.1021/acsmaterialslett.9b00520