Low-Cost Multifunctional Vacuum Chamber for Manufacturing PDMS Based Composites

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is one of the best known elastomers and has been used in several areas of activity, due to its excellent characteristics and properties, such as biocompatibility, flexibility, optical transparency and chemical stability. Furthermore, PDMS modified with other materials promotes the desired changes to broaden its range of applications in various fields of science. However, the heating, mixing and degassing steps of the manufacturing process have not received much attention in recent years when it comes to blending with solid materials. For instance, PDMS has been extensively studied in combination with waxes, which are frequently in a solid state at room temperature and as a result the interaction and manufacturing process are extremely complex and can compromise the desired material. Thus, in this work it is proposed a multifunctional vacuum chamber (MVC) with the aim to improve and accelerate the manufacturing process of PDMS composites combined with additives, blends and different kinds of solid materials. The MVC developed in this work allows to control the mixing speed parameters, temperature control and internal pressure. In addition, it is a low cost equipment and can be used for other possible modifications with different materials and processes with the ability to control those parameters. As a result, samples fabricated by using the MVC can achieve a time improvement over 133% at the heating and mixing step and approximately 200% at the last degassing step. Regarding the complete manufacturing process, it is possible to achieve an improvement over 150%, when compared with the conventional manufacturing process. When compared to maximum tensile strength, specimens manufactured using the MVC have shown a 39% and 65% improvement in maximum strain. The samples have also shown a 9% improvement in transparency at room temperature and 12% at a temperature of about 75 degrees C. It should be noted that the proposed MVC can be used for other blends and manufacturing processes where it is desirable to control the temperature, agitation speed and pressure.