Dynamic-Bond-Mediated Chain Reptation Enhances Energy Dissipation of Elastomers

Vibrations with various frequencies in daily life and industry can cause health hazards and fatigue failure of critical structures, which requires the development of elastomers with high energy dissipation at desired frequencies. Current strategies relying on tuning characteristic relaxation time of polymer chains are mostly qualitative empirical methods, and it is difficult to precisely control damping performances. Here, we report a general strategy for constructing dynamic crosslinked polymer fluid gels that provide controllable ultrahigh energy dissipation. This is realized by dynamic-bond-mediated chain reptation of polymer fluids in a crosslinked network, where the characteristic time of chain reptation is dominated by the presence of well-defined dissociation time of dynamic bonds and almost independent of their molar mass. Using prototypical supramolecular polydimethylsiloxane elastomers, we demonstrate that dynamic crosslinked polymer fluid gels exhibit a controllable ultrahigh damping performance at desired frequencies (10⁻²~10² Hz), exceeding that of typical state-of-the-art silicone damping materials. Their shock absorption is over 300 % higher than that of commercial silicone rubber under the same impact force.