Jiaxin Shi, ‡ a Tianze Zheng, ‡ a Zhiqi Wang, a Pujin Wang, a Hongkun Yang, b Jinjing Guo, a Dong Wang, b Baohua Guo a and Jun Xu * a
a Advanced Materials Laboratory of Ministry of Education (MOE), Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
E-mail: jun-xu@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
b State Key Laboratory of Organic–Inorganic Composites & Beijing Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Polymer Composites, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China
Elastomers with high strength and toughness are in great demand. Previous research on elastomers focused mainly on the design of new chemical structures, but their complicated synthesis process and expensive monomers have restricted the practical application of these materials. Inspired by general filler effects, a strategy is proposed to remarkably enhance the mechanical properties of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) elastomers by designing the arrangement of hard/soft segments using traditional chemical compositions. By utilizing the synergetic effect of weak hard segments, normal TPU elastomers are upgraded into advanced elastomers. Combining experiments and simulations, it is demonstrated that a suitable sequence length can achieve considerably enhanced strength and toughness by maximizing the relative surface area of hard domains. Mixing the obtained elastomer with an ionic liquid can result in a durable ionogel sensor with balanced mechanical strength and ionic conductivity. This easy-to-implement strategy offers a new dimension for the development of high-performance elastomers.