SBIR Phase I: Injection-molded Thermoset Shape-memory Polymers with Enhanced Acoustic Properties

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目旨在开发一种新的材料和方法，以设计基于形状记忆聚合物的舒适定制耳机。这些设备是独立的耳塞或其他三个市场产品的附件-耳机，免提和蓝牙设备，助听器：任何需要舒适和密封的听觉设备。研究的重点是适应自调节材料，这些材料符合内耳道的复杂轮廓，舒适且密封良好。该项目的智力价值与开发自适应耳机有关，该耳机由定制的形状记忆聚合物制成，具有增强的声学性能。目前的材料解决方案有几个缺点，包括无法控制耳机对内耳敏感区域施加的力，同时阻挡不需要的噪音。这个第一阶段的项目将开发下一代自调节形状记忆聚合物，这种聚合物既具有长期的舒适性，又具有有效的密封效果，是一种具有成本效益的一体式设备。该项目还将为增强型设备提供全面的概念验证，并为最终生产成功的商业设备提供必要的基础研究知识库。由于其理想的性能，化学交联形状记忆聚合物越来越多地被提出用于生物医学应用，但它们在大众市场的广泛采用受到限制。为该项目开发的新型制造工艺，即记忆合成，使一类具有完全可回收应变的新型热固性聚合物能够通过传统的塑料加工技术大规模生产。因此，这个项目的广泛影响是双重的：它将为未来具有形状记忆的复杂几何形状的注塑设备奠定基础，它将在形状记忆聚合物耳机中建立声音衰减和交联剂密度之间的第一个联系。更好的遮挡意味着耳机、蓝牙免提设备和助听器等设备所需的收听音量更低。这将是记忆合成制造工艺的第一个商业试验场，并为新一代具有可调形状记忆性能的可批量生产定制人体工程学塑料铺平道路。该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to develop a new material and methodology to design comfortable, custom earpieces based on shape-memory polymers. These devices are stand alone earplugs or attachments to products in three other markets - headphones, hands-free and Bluetooth devices, and hearing aids: any aural device that demands comfort and seal. The work focuses on these adaptive self-adjusting materials that conform to complex contours of the inner ear canal, are comfortable and seal well. The intellectual merit of the project is related to developing adaptive earpieces from tailored shape-memory polymers with enhanced acoustic properties. Current material solutions suffer from several drawbacks, including an inability to control the force exerted by the earpiece upon the sensitive regions of the inner ear and concurrently block out unwanted noise. This Phase I project will develop next generation self-adjusting shape-memory polymers that deliver both long term comfort and an effective seal as cost-effective one-size-fits-all devices. This project will also provide overall proof of concept for enhanced devices and generate a fundamental research knowledge base necessary to ultimately produce successful commercial devices.Due to their desirable properties, chemically crosslinked shape-memory polymers are increasingly being proposed in biomedical applications, but their broader adoption into mass markets has been limited. The novel manufacturing process, mnemosynation, developed leading up to this project enables a new class of thermoset polymers with fully recoverable strains that can be mass manufactured through traditional plastics processing techniques. Thus, the broad impact of this project is two-fold: it will lay the groundwork for future injection moldable devices of complex geometries possessing shape memory and it will establish the first links between sound attenuation and crosslinker density in shape-memory polymer earpieces. Better occlusion translates into lower required listening volumes on devices such as earphones, Bluetooth hands free devices and hearing aids. This will be the first commercial proving ground for the mnemosynation manufacturing process and pave the way for a new generation of mass producible customizable ergonomic plastics with tunable shape memory properties.This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).