Toughening
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Toughening elastomers using mussel-inspired iron-catechol complexes Open
Combining stiffness and stretchiness There is usually a trade-off between making a material stretchy, so that it can absorb energy on deformation, and making a material stiff, so that it does not extend very much when stretched. Mussels ha…
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50th Anniversary Perspective: Networks and Gels: Soft but Dynamic and Tough Open
Soft polymer networks have seen an explosion of recent developments motivated by new high tech applications in the biomedical field or in engineering. We present a candid and critical overview of the current understanding of the relation b…
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Making ultrastrong steel tough by grain-boundary delamination Open
Strong and tough steel Ultrahard materials often do not have similarly impressive fracture toughness. Liu et al. discovered a processing route for medium manganese steel alloy in which ultrahigh strength accompanies high fracture toughness…
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Modern Ceramic Engineering: Properties, Processing, and Use in Design, Fourth Edition Open
Preface Introduction CERAMICS AS ENGINEERING MATERIALS What is a Ceramic? History of Ceramics Applications: Engineering with Ceramics STRUCTURE AND PROPERTIES Atomic Bonding and Crystal Structure Crystal Chemistry and Specific Crystal Stru…
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Polylactide (PLA) and Its Blends with Poly(butylene succinate) (PBS): A Brief Review Open
Polylactide (PLA), poly(butylene succinate) (PBS) and blends thereof have been researched in the last two decades due to their commercial availability and the upcoming requirements for using bio-based chemical building blocks. Blends consi…
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Toughening a Self‐Healable Supramolecular Polymer by Ionic Cluster‐Enhanced Iron‐Carboxylate Complexes Open
Supramolecular polymers that can heal themselves automatically usually exhibit weakness in mechanical toughness and stretchability. Here we exploit a toughening strategy for a dynamic dry supramolecular network by introducing ionic cluster…
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Strong sequentially bridged MXene sheets Open
Significance The obstacles limiting the practical applications of promising titanium carbide MXene macroscopic sheets are poor mechanical and oxidation-resistant properties. Herein, we demonstrate strong and highly electrically conductive …
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Functionalized layered double hydroxide-based epoxy nanocomposites with improved flame retardancy and mechanical properties Open
Aiming at developing highly efficient nano fire retardants and fire retarding epoxy resins, a series of functionalized layered double hydroxides (LDHs) based on a multi-modifier system have been developed. These functionalized LDHs were us…
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Phase‐Separation‐Induced Anomalous Stiffening, Toughening, and Self‐Healing of Polyacrylamide Gels Open
Novel, tough, strong, and self-healable poly-acrylamide (PAAm) gels are fabricated by inducing an appropriate phase-separation structure using a poor solvent. The phase separation induces a gel-glass-like transition of the PAAm gels, provi…
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Simultaneously Toughening and Stiffening Elastomers with Octuple Hydrogen Bonding Open
Current synthetic elastomers suffer from the well‐known trade‐off between toughness and stiffness. By a combination of multiscale experiments and atomistic simulations, a transparent unfilled elastomer with simultaneously enhanced toughnes…
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Solvent‐Exchange‐Assisted Wet Annealing: A New Strategy for Superstrong, Tough, Stretchable, and Anti‐Fatigue Hydrogels Open
Hydrogels are widely used in tissue engineering, soft robots, wearable electronics, etc. However, it remains a great challenge to develop hydrogels possessing simultaneously high strength, large stretchability, great fracture energy, and g…
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Bone‐Inspired Materials by Design: Toughness Amplification Observed Using 3D Printing and Testing Open
Inspired by the fact that nature provides multifunctional composites by using universal building blocks, the authors design and test synthetic composites with a pattern inspired by the microstructure of cortical bone. Using a high‐resoluti…
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Ultrafine-grained Ni-rich layered cathode for advanced Li-ion batteries Open
The ultrafine-grained Ni-enriched Li[Ni 0.95 Co 0.04 Mo 0.01 ]O 2 (NCMo95) cathode achieved by inhibiting particle coarsening imparts the necessary mechanical toughness and significantly extends the battery life.
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Additive Manufacturing and Performance of Architectured Cement‐Based Materials Open
There is an increasing interest in hierarchical design and additive manufacturing (AM) of cement‐based materials. However, the brittle behavior of these materials and the presence of interfaces from the AM process currently present a major…
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Progress on improving strength-toughness of ultra-high strength martensitic steels for aerospace applications: a review Open
Ultra-high strength steels are the crucial irreplaceable materials in the fields of aerospace, national defense and military industries. Unfortunately, it is challenging to achieve the requirements of vital components because of the streng…
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Effects of Filler Size on the Mechanical Properties of Polymer-filled Dental Composites: A Review of Recent Developments Open
Resin composites are widely used in esthetic restorative dentistry.Since their introduction in the mid-1960s, these composites made steady gains in popularity.Their increased use is attributed to their excellent biocompatibility, absence o…
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Energy‐Dissipative Matrices Enable Synergistic Toughening in Fiber Reinforced Soft Composites Open
Tough hydrogels have shown strong potential as structural biomaterials. These hydrogels alone, however, possess limited mechanical properties (such as low modulus) when compared to some load‐bearing tissues, e.g., ligaments and tendons. De…
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A Review on Binderless Tungsten Carbide: Development and Application Open
WC-Co alloys have enjoyed great practical significance owing to their excellent properties during the past decades. Despite the advantages, however, recently there have been concerns about the challenges associated with the use of Co, i.e.…
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Forty years after the promise of «ceramic steel?»: Zirconia‐based composites with a metal‐like mechanical behavior Open
Forty years ago, Garvie and his Australian co‐workers reported that the stress‐induced transformation of metastable tetragonal zirconia grains to the monoclinic symmetry could give rise to a powerful toughening mechanism. Their results eve…
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Toughening of Epoxy Systems with Interpenetrating Polymer Network (IPN): A Review Open
Epoxy resins are widely used for different commercial applications, particularly in the aerospace industry as matrix carbon fibre reinforced polymers composite. This is due to their excellent properties, i.e., ease of processing, low cost,…
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Atypical fracture with long-term bisphosphonate therapy is associated with altered cortical composition and reduced fracture resistance Open
Significance Since the first reports of atypical femoral fractures (AFFs), a clinical phenomenon in which patients experience catastrophic brittle fractures of the femoral shaft with minimal trauma, the risk associated with bisphosphonates…
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Development of Tough Thermoplastic Elastomers by Leveraging Rigid–Flexible Supramolecular Segment Interplays Open
Supramolecular interactions facilitate the development of tough multifunctional thermoplastic elastomers. However, the fundamental principles that govern supramolecular toughening are barely understood, and the rational design to achieve t…
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Dislocation-toughened ceramics Open
Dislocations are mobile at low temperatures in surprisingly many ceramics but sintering minimizes their densities. Enabling local plasticity by engineering a high dislocation density is a way to combat short cracks and toughen ceramics.
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Coherently aligned nanoparticles within a biogenic single crystal: A biological prestressing strategy Open
Many roads to being tough A number of routes exist to increase toughness in both natural and human-made materials—for example, using secondary phases and precipitates or exploiting tailored architectures and shaped crystals. Polishchuk et …
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Stimuli-Responsive Toughening of Hydrogels Open
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Hierarchical Toughening of Nacre‐Like Composites Open
Reinforced polymer‐based composites are attractive lightweight materials for aircrafts, automobiles, and turbine blades, but still show strength and fracture toughness lower than traditional metals. An interesting approach to address this …
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Toughening materials: enhancing resistance to fracture Open
It has been said that ‘God invented plasticity, but the Devil invented fracture!’ Both mechanisms represent the two prime modes of structural failure, respectively, plastic collapse and the rupture/breaking of a component, but the concept …
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Tough Double Network Hydrogel and Its Biomedical Applications Open
Soft and wet hydrogels have many similarities to biological tissues, though their mechanical fragility had been one of the biggest obstacles in biomedical applications. Studies and developments in double network (DN) hydrogels have elucida…
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A review of recent progress in improving the fracture toughness of epoxy‐based composites using carbonaceous nanofillers Open
Epoxy resins (EPs) exhibit various extraordinary properties, including significant mechanical and thermal properties, low shrinkage, and high chemical resistance, opening a wide window of different applications such as adhesives, paints, c…
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Recent progress of novel biodegradable zinc alloys: from the perspective of strengthening and toughening Open
With a suitable degradation rate, fully bioresorbable degradation products, and excellent biocompatibility, Zn and its alloys are regarded as the most promising biodegradable metallic materials for clinical applications. However, their str…