Revisiting the Origins of the Fracture Energy of Tough Double-Network Hydrogels with Quantitative Mechanochemical Characterization of the Damage Zone

The high fracture energy of tough soft materials can be attributed to the large energy dissipation zone around the crack tip. Hence, quantitative characterization of energy dissipation is the key to soft matter fracture mechanics. In this study, we quantified the energy dissipation in the damage zone of a double-network (DN) hydrogel using a mechanochemical technique based on mechanoradical polymerization combined with confocal fluorescence...