Soft Porous Silicone Rubbers as Key Elements for the Realization of Acoustic Metamaterials

Kévin Zimny (1) , Aurore Merlin (1) , Abdoulaye Ba (2) , Christophe Aristégui (2) , Thomas Brunet (2) , Olivier Mondain-Monval (1)

1 CRPP - Centre de recherches Paul Pascal
2 I2M - Institut de Mécanique et d'Ingénierie de Bordeaux

In this work, macroporous materials made of polydimethylsiloxane, a soft silicone rubber, are prepared using UV polymerization with an emulsion-templating procedure. The porosity of the final materials can be precisely controlled by adjusting the volume of the dispersed phase. We show that the porous structure of the materials is the template of the droplets of the initial emulsions. Mechanical tests show that the materials Young’s moduli decrease with the porosity of the materials. Acoustic measurements indicate that, in such a porous elastomeric matrix, the sound speed also decreases dramatically as soon as the porosity increases to attain values of as low as 80 m/s......

Mots clés: Macroporous materials; Acoustic Metamaterials

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Kévin Zimny, Aurore Merlin, Abdoulaye Ba, Christophe Aristégui, Thomas Brunet, et al.. Soft Porous Silicone Rubbers as Key Elements for the Realization of Acoustic Metamaterials. Langmuir, 2015, 31, pp. 3215-3221. ⟨10.1021/la504720f⟩. ⟨hal-01138205⟩