Integrating intrinsic and configural superiority into advanced impact-resistant organohydrogels via cryo-assisted direct ink writing

The growing safety consciousness towards life and engineering poses demand for efficient anti-impact materials. Decent advances have been made in material development and structure design, whereas the superiority synergism of materials and structures remains challenging. This work develops an advanced impact-resistant shear stiffening gel-polyvinyl alcohol-chitosan (SSG-PVA-CS) organohydrogel by integrating 3D printed customized architectures with strain rate enhanced matrix materials. Following rheological optimization of components, the precursor ink presents shear thinning and yield stress fluid behaviors enabling the direct ink writing (DIW) printing techinique. The printability is systemically explored through finite element modeling assisted flow dynamics analysis and experimental validating, and a quantitative phase diagram is constructed which determines the dependence of parameters on the printing mode and quality. The organohydrogel presents favorable mechanical strength, cyclic durability and rate enhancement effect, which imparts basis of impact resistance to the matrix. The rational structure design effectively reduces the volume density within 0.60 to 0.71 g/cm3 while maintaining considerable attenuation ratios of 73.09 % to 83.55 %, with structure-dependent dynamic mechanical behaviors clarified via finite element analysis. This study provides a reliable approach to fabricate impact-resistance materials with tailored architectures and mechanically functional matrix materials, unlocking paths to break through the performance bottleneck.