Creep Behavior and Delayed Fracture of Tough Polyampholyte Hydrogels by Tensile Test

Polyampholyte (PA) hydrogels are a new class of tough and self-healing supramolecular hydrogels that have a potential as load-bearing soft materials. Studying on the creep behavior of these hydrogels and understanding the molecular mechanism are important for prediction of lifetime of the materials. In the present work, we study the creep rupture dynamics of the PA hydrogels with and without chemical cross-linking, in a certain observation time window. We have found that above some critical loading stress both physical and lightly chemically cross-linked hydrogels undergo creep rupture while moderately chemically cross-linked hydrogel resists creep flow. To elucidate the molecular mechanism, we have further compared the creep behaviors of the physical and lightly chemically cross-linked samples. The creep rate of the samples decreases with the creep time, following a power law relation, regardless of the loading stress variation. The fracture time of both of these hydrogels exponentially decreases with the increase of the loading stress, following the same master curve at high loading stress region, while the behavior of the two samples becomes different in the low loading stress region. We have explained the delayed fracture dynamics at high loading stress region in terms of a relatively weak strong bond rupture mechanism