Simultaneously Toughening and Stiffening Elastomers with Octuple Hydrogen Bonding

Current synthetic elastomers suffer from the well‐known trade‐off between toughness and stiffness. By a combination of multiscale experiments and atomistic simulations, a transparent unfilled elastomer with simultaneously enhanced toughness and stiffness is demonstrated. The designed elastomer comprises homogeneous networks with ultrastrong, reversible, and sacrificial octuple hydrogen bonding (HB), which evenly distribute the stress to each...