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Updated: Jun 17, 2026

Disentangling High Strength Copolymer Aramid Fibers to Enable the Determination of Their Mechanical Properties
Published on: September 1, 2018
A simple copolymer with integrated high impact-stiffening, broadband damping, and active perception for advanced
Jianbing Cui1,2, Pingping Liu1, Tatsuo Kaneko1
1Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Biological Colloids, Ministry of Education, School of Chemical and Material Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China. mqchen@jiangnan.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Impact-stiffening materials with switchable stiffness are crucial for the development of next-generation intelligent protective systems. However, existing impact-stiffening materials often lack sufficient damping in the high-frequency (kHz) range, resulting in undissipated energy that may cause blunt trauma to protected tissues or organs. Herein, we report a thermodynamically guided strategy for constructing impact-stiffening materials with broadband frequency damping by tailoring the intermolecular interactions in polymers. As expected, the resulting polystyrene-co-poly(2-(2-ethoxyethoxy)ethyl acrylate) (PS-PDEEA) copolymer exhibits a high impact-stiffening response (1843 times, 0.1-100 Hz), broadband frequency damping (tan δ > 1.0, 10-2-103 Hz), and good optical transparency (transmittance > 80%). Moreover, by leveraging the charge-trapping properties of PDEEA, the copolymer is further designed as a triboelectric sensor, enabling the integration of impact protection with active perception.
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