Silicone of beta generation – SIL-GEN-BETA

The SIL-GEN-? project aims at producing the next generation of silicone elastomers (generation ?, starting in 2025). By melting IMP (Polymer Materials and Engineering)’s members knowhow, namely chemistry, mechanics, physics of polymers, and visions on both silicone formulation and material processing, we ought to reach performances not currently available for these elastomers, combining super-softness at small deformation and large strain-stiffening. To do so, we will play with the topology and physical chemistry of multiple networks, mixing covalent and reversible chemistries. To better control their properties, these materials will not be reinforced with fillers, but toughened by introducing different types of phase-separated clusters (via H bonding and ionic interactions). The work program will be divided into 3 scientific interdisciplinary work packages: 1. Analyses and exploitation of the best systems currently available; 2. Formulations and modelization of behaviour of new filler-free elastomers by mixing the two crosslinking methods; and 3. 3D Processing of these new materials in view of future innovating end-using. The final outcome of this project is to provide a platform of new silicone elastomers as original research objects, also available to the scientific community for tomorrow's applications (e.g. synthetic prostheses, actuated microfluidic chips, robotics).