A material tears, peels, breaks by growth of a crack, commonly idealized as a localized dissipative process of mechanochemistry. This graduate course draws on science of fracture of all materials, providing a perspective for recent advances on polymers. docs.google.com/document/d/19t…

Materials science, materials scientist, and materials engineer A high-level description msestudent.com/what-is-materi…

Monomers link into chains, and chains crosslink into a network. Both links and crosslinks are covalent bonds. Crosslinks are also called junctions. Strand Dangling end Loop Entanglement (missing) Strands should touch one another through noncovalent interactions.

This new paper shows that the strength of a polymer network is set by sequential breaking of a small fraction of bonds, which are not localized around a crack but are distributed throughout the network. arxiv.org/pdf/2502.11339

In this architecture, the network achieves high toughness when the noncovalent bonds are of intermediate strength.

I will give a lecture, in MaP Distinguished Lecture Series on Engineering with Living Materials, ETH Zurich, titled Crack Growth in Soft Materials and Tissues 31 March 2025, Monday 11:15 (Boston) 16:15 (Zurich) The lecture will be online Zoom link: ethz.zoom.us/j/65691051832

The 2025 Winston Chen Lecture at Harvard University Force-triggered growth of double network hydrogels Jian Ping Gong Hokkaido University 4 April 2025, Friday 11:00 am Boston Pierce Hall 301 The talk is open to all. Zoom link: urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https… Please kindly repost.

How does a polymer glass resist fatigue crack growth? In our new paper, we investigate this question using a shear-lag model and experimental data. Check out our work, now published in @SoftMatter: doi.org/10.1039/D4SM01… Zhigang Suo Zheqi Chen Xianyang Bao

Our paper is online! Preserving long chains in natural rubber forms a network with long strands, dense entanglements, and strain-induced crystallization, greatly enhancing crack resistance. nature.com/articles/s4189… Zheqi Chen Xianyang Bao MWM_Tan Yakov Kutsovsky Zhigang Suo

A powerful strategy to develop materials for sustainability is to reimagine the existing economically important materials. In a new paper published in Nature Sustainability, we show that the performance of natural rubber can be greatly enhanced.suo.seas.harvard.edu/files/suo/file…

New milestone after our 2023 Nature stress-deconcentration paper: in @NatureSustain we skip mastication, keep long NR chains, let them tangle & crystallize. Crack resistance ×5, toughness ×10. Next step on our path towards elimination of rubber road dust and long-life tyres

Materials scientists have devised a way to produce natural rubber that retains its key properties of stretchiness and durability while greatly improving its ability to resist cracking, even after repeated cycles of use. bit.ly/4dpEHCl

Our paper is online! 😀 We developed a tough hydrogel that achieves high modulus, high fatigue threshold, and low hysteresis — simultaneously! 🔗 nature.com/articles/s4146… Many thanks to Zhigang Suo Zheqi Chen Guodong Nian MWM_Tan Yakov Kutsovsky Christine Heera Ahn

In my Thermodynamics classes in the Introductory Physics course I do an exercise on the operation of the Italian coffee maker to illustrate the ideal gas equation. When I saw this infographic in the European Physical Society (EPS) news magazine I could do nothing but fall in love with it ❤️

A report on our recent paper New Tires Could End Up Ten Times Tougher With Harvard's Crack-Resistant Rubber Guodong Nian Zheqi Chen Xianyang Bao MWM_Tan Yakov Kutsovsky jalopnik.com/1896687/new-ti… jalopnik.com/1896687/new-ti…