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In studies of the dynamic failure of brittle hydrogels, a bound has beenplaced on the process zone scale - the scale where material separation andultimate failure occur. For the polyacrylamide hydrogel system under study,this bound is set at 20 microns. Thus, any subtle alterations to the materialat a \emph{smaller} scale should not in principle alter the dynamic fractureresponse of the hydrogel. Here we test this directly by embeddingsub-micron-scale latex polystyrene microspheres within the brittlepolyacrylamide hydrogel at a solids fraction of 0.1 \%. We verify that thespheres are well-distributed throughout the hydrogel material at thisconcentration with optical microscopy, and reconstruct the 3D distribution ofthese spheres using laser scanning confocal microscopy in backscatter mode.Finally, we test the fracture behavior of this gel with the dilute, embeddedsub-micron spheres, and find that the brittle material failure modality commonto this material \emph{without} the sub-micron spheres is indeed retained. Bycomparing the crack tip opening displacement, fracture energy and the crack'sspeed with established data from prior experimental work, we demonstrate thatthis material's failure is brittle, as it is in good agreement with the purehydrogel system.

Dilute concentrations of submicron particles do not alter the brittle fracture of polyacrylamide hydrogels