Super-elasticity at 4 K of covalently crosslinked polyimide aerogels with negative Poisson's ratio.

ABSTRACT: The deep cryogenic temperatures encountered in aerospace present significant challenges for the performance of elastic materials in spacecraft and related apparatus. Reported elastic carbon or ceramic aerogels overcome the low-temperature brittleness in conventional elastic polymers. However, complicated fabrication process and high costs greatly limited their applications. In this work, super-elasticity at a deep cryogenic temperature of covalently crosslinked polyimide (PI) aerogels is achieved based on scalable and low-cost directional dimethyl sulfoxide crystals assisted freeze gelation and freeze-drying strategy. The covalently crosslinked chemical structure, cellular architecture, negative Poisson's ratio (-0.2), low volume shrinkage (3.1%), and ultralow density (6.1 mg/cm³

SUBMITTER: Cheng Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8253740 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature