Bimodal Networks as Candidates for Electroactive Polymers

An alternative network formulation method was adopted in order to obtain a different type of silicone based elastomeric systems - the so-called bimodal networks - using two vinyl-terminated polydimethyl siloxanes (PDMS) of different molecular weight, a labelled crosslinker (3 or 4-functional), and a platinum-catalyzed hydrosilylation reaction between the three reactants3. The crosslinking reaction was initiated by mixing different amounts of short PDMS chains and long PDMS chains with the stoichiometric amount of the crosslinker in a series of mixing schemes. We visualize how the short chains organize themselves between the long chains and show how this leads to unexpectedly good properties for DEAP purposes due both to the low extensibility of the short chains that attach strongly the long chains and to the extensibility of the last ones that retards the rupture process.