Level 1 - Absolute Beginner
Scientists made a new kind of rubber. It can be printed with a 3D printer.
This rubber is very strong. It does not break easily.
It also lasts a long time. It does not wear out fast, even after being bent many times.
This new material could help make better prosthetics, wearable devices, and soft robots.
- rubber
- a stretchy, bendable material
- 3D printer
- a machine that builds objects layer by layer from a digital design
- strong
- able to resist breaking or damage
- wear out
- to become weaker or damaged after being used a lot
- prosthetic
- an artificial body part, such as a hand or leg
- wearable
- a device made to be worn on the body
- soft robot
- a robot made of bendable, flexible materials
- material
- a substance used to make things
Level 2 - Elementary
Engineers have created a new type of 3D printable rubber that solves a problem scientists have struggled with for years: making a stretchy material that is both very strong and very long lasting.
Most stretchy materials that resist breaking tend to wear out quickly after being stretched and bent again and again. Materials that last a long time, on the other hand, often break easily. Finding both qualities in one material has been difficult.
The new material, developed by researchers at EPFL, a university in Switzerland, uses two different networks inside the rubber that share the stress of stretching. This design lets the material absorb damage without breaking apart.
In tests, the new rubber was up to fifteen times tougher than similar materials and three times more resistant to wearing out. Researchers say it could be used in wearable devices, prosthetics, and soft robots that need to bend repeatedly without failing.
- elastomer
- a rubber like material that can stretch and return to its original shape
- fatigue
- damage that builds up in a material from repeated use
- toughness
- the ability of a material to resist breaking under stress
- network
- a connected system, in this case of molecules within a material
- absorb
- to take in and hold something, such as energy or force
- stress
- the force applied to a material that can cause it to bend or break
- researcher
- a person who studies a subject carefully to discover new information
- repeatedly
- happening again and again
Level 3 - Intermediate
Researchers at EPFL's Soft Materials Laboratory in Switzerland have unveiled a new class of rubber like materials, called double network granular elastomers, that appear to resolve a longstanding tension in materials science between fracture resistance and fatigue resistance.
Elastomers that resist fracturing under a single large stress tend to accumulate damage when stretched and released repeatedly, eventually failing from fatigue. Conversely, materials engineered to withstand repeated cycling often lack the toughness to survive a sudden, sharp impact. Achieving both properties simultaneously has proven elusive for decades.
The new material addresses this by combining two distinct internal networks, one composed of granular elastomer particles and one of a softer, continuous elastomer, that share mechanical strain between them. When the material is stretched, stress redistributes from the stiffer microparticles into the softer surrounding regions, where energy is dissipated through the sliding and rearrangement of polymer chains rather than through irreversible bond breakage.
Published in the journal Science Advances, the research demonstrated fracture toughness values up to fifteen times higher than comparable elastomers and fatigue resistance up to three times higher, a combination the authors describe as rare. Because the material was engineered from the outset for additive manufacturing, its developers believe it could quickly find use in 3D printed wearables, prosthetics, and soft robotic components that must endure years of repeated flexing.
- granular
- made up of small grains or particles
- fracture resistance
- a material's ability to resist cracking or breaking apart
- cycling
- repeated stretching and releasing of a material over time
- dissipated
- spread out and gradually lost, as with energy
- irreversible
- unable to be undone or reversed
- polymer chain
- a long molecule made of repeating linked units, found in plastics and rubbers
- additive manufacturing
- another term for 3D printing, building objects layer by layer
- elusive
- difficult to achieve, find, or understand
Level 4 - Advanced
A team at EPFL's Soft Materials Laboratory has introduced a new architecture for 3D printable elastomers that appears to sidestep one of materials science's more stubborn tradeoffs: the inverse relationship between a rubber's resistance to catastrophic fracture and its endurance under cyclic loading.
The dilemma is well established. Elastomers engineered for toughness typically dissipate energy through mechanisms, such as the sacrificial breaking of chemical bonds, that leave permanent damage behind, making them progressively weaker with each stretch cycle even as they survive any single sharp impact. Materials optimized instead for fatigue endurance tend to lack the energy dissipating architecture needed to arrest crack propagation under sudden, extreme stress. Reconciling the two has largely eluded materials scientists.
The team's solution, termed double network granular elastomers, embeds discrete granular elastomer particles within a softer, continuous elastomeric matrix, creating a composite architecture in which applied strain is distributed heterogeneously across the two phases. Under load, the stiffer microparticles concentrate stress into the surrounding compliant regions, where energy is dissipated reversibly through chain sliding and microstructural rearrangement rather than through permanent covalent bond scission, allowing the material to recover much of its original integrity after each deformation cycle.
Reporting the work in Science Advances, the authors documented fracture toughness gains of up to fifteen fold and fatigue resistance improvements of up to three fold relative to conventional elastomer benchmarks, a combination they characterize as rare in the literature. Because the granular architecture was designed specifically for extrusion based additive manufacturing rather than adapted from bulk casting processes, the researchers anticipate a comparatively direct path toward applications in 3D printed prosthetics, wearable electronics, and soft robotic actuators, all domains where components must withstand years of repeated mechanical cycling without replacement.
- cyclic loading
- the repeated application and removal of stress on a material over time
- sacrificial
- deliberately given up or broken to protect the material as a whole
- crack propagation
- the spreading of a crack through a material under stress
- heterogeneously
- unevenly or in a non uniform manner across a substance
- compliant
- able to bend or yield easily under force
- covalent bond scission
- the breaking of a strong chemical bond that permanently alters a material's structure
- extrusion
- a manufacturing process that forces material through a shaped opening to form an object
- actuator
- a component that produces motion or movement in a mechanical system
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