Janus Particle-Armored Porous Elastomer with Tunable Modulus and High Resilience

Targeted porous structures and tunable mechanical properties are essential for the design and application of porous materials. However, the intrinsic homogeneity of a continuous matrix usually results in a common irreconcilable contradiction between the modulus and resilience under large deformation, limiting the tunability of the mechanical performance and, consequently, their applications. This study fabricated Janus particle-armored porous elastomers (JPEs) with a flexible and scalable emulsion polymerization method. The hard Janus particles, as a robust armor on the pore walls, greatly enhanced the modulus of porous elastomers by up to 23 times and improved their thermal dimensional stability. Meanwhile, the JPEs exhibited excellent compressive resilience with recovery ratios greater than 98%, and the maximum recoverable compressive strain could be up to 70%. Therefore, the JPEs exhibited a distinctive energy dissipation ability with frequency dependence, making them potentially applicable to vibration-damping fields. It sets a new model for fabricating porous materials with superior mechanical performance, achieving enhanced modulus and high resilience under large compressive deformation synchronously.