Creation of highly elastic supramolecular elastomers: paying attention to blind spots in conventional molecular designs

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K13785
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Polymer/Textile materials
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: Noro Atsushi 名古屋大学, 工学研究科, 講師 (90377896)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: エラストマー / 超分子エラストマー / 非共有結合性エラストマー / 非共有結合 / タフネス / 伸縮性 / ブロック共重合体 / 可逆的付加開裂連鎖移動重合

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Highly elastic, tough supramolecular elastomers (noncovalent-bonded elastomers) were prepared from block copolymers composed of glassy, solid blocks and molten blocks with multiple noncovalent bonding functional groups. Reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer polymerization was used to synthesize polystyrene-b-poly[(butyl acrylate)-co-acrylamide]-b-polystyrene (S-Ba-S) that serves as a supramolecular elastomer. S-Ba-S showed much better mechanical properties than polystyrene-b-poly(butyl acrylate)-b-polystyrene (S-B-S) of a conventional thermoplastic elastomer without noncovalent bonding functional groups, even in spite of having almost the same total average molecule weight. Therefore, incorporation of noncovalent bonding functional groups into molten blocks was found to be useful to prepare supramolecular elastomers attaining high extensibility and toughness simultaneously.

Free Research Field

高分子化学、高分子・繊維材料