Lightweight silicon and glass composites with submicron viscoelastic interlayers and unconventional combinations of stiffness and damping

The necessity of stiff structural materials with advanced damping characteristics has arisen naturally along with the technological evolution. However, despite ever-growing demand, the achievement of stiff materials with high damping factor remains challenging because of the antagonistic nature of the two properties. Here, this challenge is accomplished by exploiting the non-affine deformation of laminated composites paired with the dissipative nature of the viscoelastic phase. Guided by a finite element design analysis, composites with flat submillimeter stiff layers and submicron viscoelastic interlayers are fabricated. The viscoelastic component consists of a prudently chemically architectured comb-like polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer that properly adheres to the stiff silicon or glass layers, strong enough to withstand repeated dynamic cycles. The composites are fabricated using an unconventional but simple stacking route based on the diffusion of a platinum catalyst precursor into a reactive solvent-free PDMS melt. The fabricated composites, Si/PDMS and glass/PDMS, exhibit an elastic modulus higher than common monolithic glass, they are as light as glass but have about four orders of magnitude higher loss factor. The composites markedly outperform numerous customary materials, they escape the Ashby limit for mechanical damping – stiffness trade-off, and their exceptional combinations of properties are maintained over a broad range of temperatures and frequencies.