Ideal (monodomain) smectic-A elastomers cross-linked in the smectic-A phase are simply uniaxial rubbers, provided deformations are small. From these materials smectic-C elastomers are produced by a cooling through the smectic-A to smectic-C phase transition. At least in principle, biaxial smectic elastomers could also be produced via cooling from the smectic-A to a biaxial smectic phase. These ...

Abstract Shrimali and Lopez-Pamies (2023, “The ‘Pure-Shear’ Fracture Test for Viscoelastic Elastomers Its Revelation on Griffth Fracture,” Extreme Mech. Lett., 58, p. 101944) have recently shown that the Griffith criticality condition governs crack growth in viscoelastic elastomers can be reduced to a fundamental form involves exclusively intrinsic fracture energy Gc of elastomer, and, so doing...

We have monitored the reflectivity of mirrors that were exposed to a fluoroelastomer (3M-Fluorel 2176) and a room-temperature vulcanizing silicone rubber (RTV-615) in vacuum. The 95% confidence limit on the decrease of mirror reflectivities was less than 0.35 ppm/week for Fluorel and <0.29 ppm/week for RTV-615.

A two-dimensional effective model for the semisoft elastic behavior of nematic elastomers is derived in the thin film limit. The model is used to investigate numerically the force-stretch curves and the deformed shape, and to resolve the local patterns in the director orientation in a stretching experiment. From the force-stretch curves we recover the two critical stretches which mark the trans...

Thiol-functionalised silicone-oils were crosslinked with silver nanoparticles to give mechanically consistent elastomers with high self-healing power. The materials were broken into small pieces and put together in intimate contact for 24 hours at room temperature, observing a complete macroscopic healing and a quantitative recovery of compression-stress and strain.

In this study, a maxillofacial silicone elastomer was stained with cigarette smoke. The stain was then removed by solvent extraction using 1,1,1-trichloroethane. The cigarette smoke produced large color changes in the elastomer as measured from spectrophotometric reflectance curves. The solvent was totally effective in removing the cigarette stain without changing the color of the silicone base.

The described protocol is a simple method to make protein micropatterns with a micron size resolution. It can be applied to control cell shape and adhesive geometry, and also for any other assay requiring protein patterning. It is based on the use of a photomask with microfeatures to locally irradiate with deep UV light (below 200 nm) an antifouling substrate, making it locally adsorbing for pr...

There is presently significant interest in cellular responses to physical forces, and numerous devices have been developed to apply stretch to cultured cells. Many of the early devices were limited by the heterogeneity of deformation of cells in different locations and by the high degree of anisotropy at a particular location. We have therefore developed a system to impose cyclic, large-strain,...