Self-healing allows increasing the service life of materials by overcoming some issues caused mechanical failures. We propose a new concept to impart room-temperature self-healing properties thermoplastic elastomers. A macromolecular additive whose interacting units can interfere with hard segments elastomer accelerates chain dynamics and imparts composite material limited detrimental effect on...

Cellular forces are closely related to many physiological processes, including cell migration, growth, division, and differentiation. Here, we describe newly developed techniques to measure these forces with high spatial resolution. Our approach is based on ultrasoft silicone elastomer films with a regular microstructure molded into the surface. Mechanical forces applied by living cells to such...

Since the invention of the first implantable shunt valve by Nulsen and Spitz (12) almost 50 years ago, there has been a remarkable number of ingenious modifications and new designs of shunt equipment to treat pediatric hydrocephalus. These developments were in response to the immediately evident high shunt failure rate. These designs included antisiphon devices (15), on-off devices, gravity-act...

A novel method for the fabrication of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) combines acrylic polymers and single wall carbon nanotube network electrodes. DEAs made using this technique do not require prestretching, have extremely thin electrodes, and can be actuated at low voltage. The method is applied to create a multimorph device with nine actuation modes based on just four inputs.

In this study, we propose one-step chemical modification of plastics for bonding various plastics with poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) elastomer at room temperature. This was realized by anchoring poly[dimethylsiloxane-co-(3-aminopropyl)methylsiloxane] (amine-PDMS linker), a chemical composed of a PDMS backbone incorporating an amine side group, on the surface of thermoplastics. Following corona ...

Magneto-rheological (MR) elastomers contain micro-/nano-sized ferromagnetic particles dispersed in a soft elastomer matrix, and their rheological properties (storage and loss moduli) exhibit a significant dependence on the application of a magnetic field (namely MR effect). Conversely, it is reported in this work that this multiphysics coupling is associated with an inverse effect (i.e. the dep...

OBJECTIVES To compare (i) the in vivo release of fluoride from fluoridated elastomers to the in vitro release, and (ii) the residual fluoride content of the elastomers after 1 week in the mouth with and without fluoride toothpaste and mouthrinse. DESIGN A prospective, longitudinal, cross-over study. SUBJECTS AND METHOD Six subjects were recruited by poster to take part in the study. Each su...

The positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy was used to investigate the free volume hole size of ethylene octane copolymers as a function of deformation in the range from 0 to 110% in steps of 10%. For each degree of deformation a series of 5–6 positron annihilation lifetime spectra was collected in situ. All spectra of a given series were analysed simultaneously. They were resolved into th...

We demonstrate, using both finite element simulations and a linear stability analysis, the emergence of an electro-elastocapillary Rayleigh-plateau instability in dielectric elastomer (DE) films under 2D, plane strain conditions. When subject to an electric field, the DEs exhibit a buckling instability for small elastocapillary numbers. For larger elastocapillary numbers, the DEs instead exhibi...