Thermal, Mechanical, and Acoustic Properties of Polydimethylsiloxane Filled with Hollow Glass Microspheres
Materials 2022
Sergei Vlassov, Sven Oras, Martin Timusk, Veronika Zadin, Tauno Tiirats, Ilya Sosnin, Rünno Lõhmus, Artis Linarts, Andreas Kyritsakis, Leonid Dorogin

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is the most widely used silicon-based polymer due to its versatility and its various attractive properties. The fabrication of PDMS involves liquid phase cross-linking to obtain hydrophobic and mechanically flexible material in the final solid form. This allows to add various fillers to affect the properties of the resulting material. PDMS has a relatively low Thermal Conductivity (TC), in the order of 0.2 W/mK, which makes it attractive for thermal insulation applications such as sealing in construction. Although a further decrease in the TC of PDMS can be highly beneficial for such applications, most research on the thermal properties of PDMS composites have focused on fillers that increase the TC rather than decrease it. In the present work, we propose a simple and reliable method for making a PDMS-based composite material with significantly improved thermal insulation properties, by adding hollow glass microspheres (HGMs) to the mixture of the liquid base and the cross-linker (10:1 ratio), followed by degassing and heat-assisted crosslinking. We obtained a 31% reduction of thermal conductivity and a 60% increase in the elastic modulus of samples with HGM content of 17% by weight. At the same time, the sound insulation capacity of the PDMS-HGM composite is slightly decreased in comparison to pure PDMS, as a result of its lower density. Finally, the wettability of the samples had no dependence on HGM conte


Keywords
PDMS; hollow glass microspheres; thermal conductivity; sound insulation
DOI
10.3390/ma15051652
Hyperlink
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/15/5/1652

Vlassov, S., Oras, S., Timusk, M., Zadin, V., Tiirats, T., Sosnin, I., Lõhmus, R., Linarts, A., Kyritsakis, A., Dorogin, L. Thermal, Mechanical, and Acoustic Properties of Polydimethylsiloxane Filled with Hollow Glass Microspheres. Materials, 2022, Vol. 15, No. 5, Article number 1652. ISSN 1996-1944. Pieejams: doi:10.3390/ma15051652

Publication language
English (en)
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