Physically crosslinked fluorosilicone elastomers obtained by self- assembly and template polycondensation of tailored building blocks

Abstract

Self-assembly and template polycondensation of two tailor-made fluorinated oligocarbosiloxanes generated physically crosslinked elastomer-like materials (denoted here as “gelastomers”). Clustering was found to arise from phase separation between strongly aggregated, polar silanol chain-ends and highly hydrophobic fluorosilicone domains. The large concentration of silanol functions promoted a template catalyst-free co-condensation to generate chains of typically 10 000 g mol⁻¹ after extended times. One of these gelastomers exhibited noteworthy mechanical properties, such an elongation as large as 1500% at a fair strain force (0.2 MPa).