Researchers at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences have made new progress in the study of highly transparent polyamide elastomers

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The 25th National \"Safety Production Month\" in 2026: Everyone talks about safety, and everyone knows how to handle emergencies; identifying and addressing risks and hazards. -------------------------------------------------- Transparent polymers combine high transparency, adjustable refractive index, ease of processing, low density, and good insulating properties, allowing them to be used as a substitute for traditional glass to enable lighter-weight design of optical components. Commonly used transparent polymer materials today, such as PC, PMMA, PET, CPI, and COC, each have their own advantages in terms of transparency, heat resistance, processability, and dimensional stability. However, they often lack high elasticity, and their toughness and ductility are also insufficient. With the emergence of new application areas such as flexible electronics, wearable devices, and electronic skin, academia and industry have put forward new performance requirements for transparent polymer materials: not only excellent transparency and mechanical properties are needed, but also good flexibility, resilience, and operational stability (resistance to high temperatures, external forces, and chemical corrosion, etc.). Recently, with the support of a key research and development program, the team led by Dong Xia from the Engineering Plastics Laboratory at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has carried out systematic research on the multi-scale aggregated structure of highly transparent alicyclic polyamide elastomers. Building on previous research on transparent thermoplastic elastomers (Adv. Mater. 2018, 30 (38): 201802556, Chem. Eur. J. 2023, 29, e202300622; Chin. J. Chem. 2024, 42: 943–950), the research team developed a new class of highly transparent polyamide elastomer materials (LCPAE) with a low degree of microphase separation. The research team used 4,4’-diaminodicyclohexylmethane (PACM) in place of linear diamines to suppress the crystallization of the hard segments in the elastomer. Meanwhile, PTMEG650 with a lower molecular weight was used as the soft segment, which further reduced the degree of microphase separation, broke phase locking, weakened the phase boundaries, and reduced the size of the phase regions below the wavelength of visible light, thereby improving structural homogeneity. The diffusely distributed interfacial layer and the smaller size of the phase regions effectively suppress light scattering at the phase interfaces, while the numerous mixed-phase regions act as transition zones, helping to mitigate the issue of refractive index mismatch between the soft and hard segments. Through the aforementioned block structure design, the optical properties of LCPAE have been significantly improved. The light transmittance of the thermopressured film with a thickness of 0.2 mm at a wavelength of 550 nm can reach 91.1%, and this value remains stable during heating/cooling processes as well as under uniaxial stretching. Its tensile strength is greater than 30 MPa, and its elongation at break is greater than 1000%. It also exhibits excellent resistance to hydrolysis, polar solvents, and impacts, making it suitable for use as transparent shock-absorbing/buffering components or as transparent protective covers/windows. The relevant research findings were recently published in the journal Advanced Materials (Advanced Materials, 2026:e73623). The co-first authors of the paper are doctoral students Ren Yuting and Su Chenlong, while the corresponding author is Researcher Dong Xia.