Open AccessCover Image, Volume 57, Issue 15
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of polymer science part b: polymer physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Reports
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.65
H-Index - 145
eISSN - 1099-0488
pISSN - 0887-6266
DOI - 10.1002/polb.24686
Subject(s) - copolymer , cover (algebra) , polymer , quantum entanglement , polystyrene , polymer science , materials science , polymer chemistry , composite material , computer science , physics , quantum , mechanical engineering , quantum mechanics , engineering
Mechanical properties of triblock copolymer gels Mechanical properties of the physically assembled gels, consisting of triblock copolymers dissolved in a midblock selective solvent, can be tuned by changing the polymer molecular weight and block lengths. As reported on page 1014, Satish Mishra, Rosa Badani, Santanu Kundu, and colleagues utilized polystyrene‐polyisoprene‐polystyrene copolymers with varying midblock length to achieve midblock entanglement in the gels. Gels with midblock entanglement display higher stretchability, strain‐rate dependent moduli, and steeper crack‐tip velocity dependence of the fracture energy release rate. These characteristics can be harnessed to obtain the stretchable and tougher gels. The cover image depicts the failure of a gel subjected to the tensile load. (DOI: 10.1002/polb.24860 )