Designing and Fabricating an Unprecedented Wide Temperature Range of Novel Elastomer: Simulation and Experiment

The rapidly developing aerospace industry has a severe requirement for rubber components utilized for spacecraft, especially the resistance to extreme temperature differences because of the complex space environment. However, it is difficult to increase the service temperature range (the temperature range that the materials can be employed efficiently) of the existing elastomeric materials based on traditional methods, such as introducing functional terminal group or heterogeneous atom. Herein, by introducing a new type of long-side chain siloxane (LCS) that is constituted by (−Si–O−) bonds with various lengths (m), we design a novel silicone elastomer with an unprecedented wide temperature range (−149–400 °C). Meanwhile, we calculate the glass transition temperature (T g) via two different methods (specific volume and conformational transition versus temperature) and analyze the segment conformational transition of molecular chains. Based on our results, when m = 4 and ϕ = 5% (ϕ is referred to as the mole fraction of LCS), the range of T g is from −145 to −149 °C, which realizes the maximum temperature range. Besides, compared with the traditional elastomer, this novel elastomer does not introduce other heteroatoms. This strategy of a wide temperature range of novel elastomers is anticipated to be applied in the design and fabrication of advanced tech-device used in various extreme environments.