TY - JOUR
T1 - Solvent‑aided phase separation in hydrogel towards significantly enhanced mechanoresponsive strength
AU - Lu, Haibao
AU - Xing, Ziyu
AU - Chen, Mingji
AU - Yu, Kai
AU - Fu, Richard
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China NSFC (Grant 11725208) and Newton Mobility (Grant IE161019) through Royal Society and NSFC.
PY - 2021/5/1
Y1 - 2021/5/1
N2 - Understanding working principles and thermodynamics behind phase separations, which have significant influences on condensed molecular structures and their performances, can inspire to design and fabricate anomalously and desirably mechanoresponsive hydrogels. However, a combination of techniques from physicochemistry and mechanics has yet been established for the phase separation in hydrogels. In this study, a thermodynamic model is firstly formulated to describe solvent-aided phase and microphase separations in the hydrogels, which present significantly improved mechanoresponsive strengths. Flory–Huggins theory and interfacial energy equation have further been applied to model the thermodynamics of concentration-dependent and temperature-dependent phase separations. An intricately detailed phase map has finally been formulated to explore the working principle. The thermodynamic methodology of phase separations, combined with the constitutive stress–strain relationships, has a great potential to explore the working mechanisms in mechanoresponsive hydrogels.
AB - Understanding working principles and thermodynamics behind phase separations, which have significant influences on condensed molecular structures and their performances, can inspire to design and fabricate anomalously and desirably mechanoresponsive hydrogels. However, a combination of techniques from physicochemistry and mechanics has yet been established for the phase separation in hydrogels. In this study, a thermodynamic model is firstly formulated to describe solvent-aided phase and microphase separations in the hydrogels, which present significantly improved mechanoresponsive strengths. Flory–Huggins theory and interfacial energy equation have further been applied to model the thermodynamics of concentration-dependent and temperature-dependent phase separations. An intricately detailed phase map has finally been formulated to explore the working principle. The thermodynamic methodology of phase separations, combined with the constitutive stress–strain relationships, has a great potential to explore the working mechanisms in mechanoresponsive hydrogels.
KW - Hydrogel
KW - Mechanoresponsive
KW - Microphase separation
KW - Phase separation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85102527426&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10409-021-01072-4
DO - 10.1007/s10409-021-01072-4
M3 - Article
SN - 0567-7718
VL - 37
SP - 757
EP - 766
JO - Acta Mechanica Sinica/Lixue Xuebao
JF - Acta Mechanica Sinica/Lixue Xuebao
IS - 5
ER -