Polydimethylsiloxane mechanical properties: a systematic review

Abstract

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) has been a promising material for microfluidic, particularly in lab-on-chip. Due to the panoply of good physical, mechanical and chemical properties, namely, viscosity, modulus of elasticity, colour, thermal conductivity, thermal coefficient of expansion, its application has been increasingly requested in quite different areas. Despite such characteristics, there are also some drawbacks associated, and to overcome them, several strategies have been developed to modify PDMS. Given the great variety of relevant conducted research in this field, the present work aims to gather the most relevant information, the advantages and disadvantages of some of the techniques used, and also identify potential gaps and challenges in it. To this end, a systematic literature review was conducted by collecting data from four different databases, Science Direct, American Chemical Society, Scopus, and Springer. Two authors independently screened the references, extracted the key information, and assessed the quality of the included studies. After the analysis of the collected data, 25 studies were selected that addressed the various mechanical properties of PDMS and how to modify them in order to suit a particular application.