Topic: Advances in Elastomer Materials: From Design to Functional Applications

Elastomers, as the portmanteau of elastic polymers, are characterized by a high degree of flexibility, elasticity, and resilience. Their unique combination of advanced mechanical features makes them valuable in applications across diverse modern technologies, from long-term healthcare to sustainable water harvesting. Within these applications, elastomers play crucial roles in absorbing shocks, providing sealing, and enduring repeated deformation cycles. These properties are typically governed by the phenomena spanning from nanometer single chain level, mesoscale polymer network level, and macro-scale bulk material level. Currently, barriers between different disciplines hinder a cross-scale understanding, thereby limiting the space for reaching the extreme properties of elastomers. This Special Issue aims to unite researchers from various disciplines to exchange the latest advances in molecular design, mechanochemistry, advanced manufacturing techniques, atomic and coarse-grained modeling, and machine learning tools for comprehending the structure-property-function relationship of advanced elastomer materials and developing high-performing devices for actuators, sensors, robots, infrastructures, and biomedical applications. One mission of this publication is to evoke rational design and prototyping for developing high-performing innovative devices that possess extreme functions. These covered topics include, but are not limited to: 

•   Fracture, fatigue, and degradation of elastomers; 

•   Mechanochemical tools for elastomer designs; 

•   Bioinspired and bio-mimicking designs;

•   Advanced manufacturing of soft materials and elastomeric composites with heterogeneity; 

•   Artificial intelligence and multi-scale modeling-assisted design and optimization for functional elastomer materials;
•   Anisotropic and programmable functions, together with their modeling, design, fabrication, and control; 

•   Elastomers with stimuli-responsive and reconfigurable properties together with their applications in flexible sensors, actuators, soft machines, and autonomy and intelligence;      

•   Application of elastomers to advance sustainable building environments such as energy efficiency, water conservation, waste reduction and recycling, and human comfort;

•   Biocompatible and biodegradable functions in medical applications such as implantable devices, soft miniature medical robots, and continuum medical devices.