High energy-dissipation PDMS polymer-fluid-gels over an ultra-wide temperature range

Abstract

Viscoelastic polymers exhibit strong energy dissipation in the glass transition region due to the motion of chain segments. Yet, the damping temperature ranges are pretty narrow, and the damping effect is poor at low frequencies. Here, we report two PDMS polymer-fluid-gels prepared by traditional curing and solvothermal polymerization, both of which exhibit excellent energy-dissipation capacity with loss factor larger than 0.7 at 1 Hz both covering 255 K (−55 °C to 200 °C), and larger than 1.0 at 1 Hz covering 134.7 K and 146.7 K, respectively, exceeding all the literature reports. Furthermore, solvothermal polymerization realizes large cross-linking meshes in which polymer fluids can stretch with less restriction and have longer relaxation time, which is conducive to low-frequency damping. The lower the frequency, the more pronounced the relative increase in damping, with the ratio of the two being greater than 4 times in the measuring low-frequency range. Moreover, the gels can absorb impact in extreme environments and protect raw eggs from breaking at temperatures as low as −50 °C when dropped from a height of 2 m.