Fig. 2.

Structure and tensile behavior of PA gels used in this study. (A) The 1D SAXS profiles of undeformed gels dialyzed at various temperatures T_dial, coded as PA-T_dial. (Inset) The 2D SAXS images. (B) Tensile behaviors of the gels. (C) Phase network deformation ratio in parallel (d_///d₀) and perpendicular (d_⊥/d₀) directions versus global elongation ratio λ. The orange lines stand for the affine deformation of the phase networks. The maximum affine deformation λ_affine for each sample is indicated by arrows. (Inset) For clarity, the data of PA-30 are shown, and three deformation regimes are marked. (D) Summary of SAXS peak intensity I_m, average phase network mesh size d₀, maximum affine elongation ratio of phase networks λ_affine in tensile test, and critical elongation ratio of fatigue test for fast crack growth, λ_tran (extracted from Fig. 3D). a.u., arbitrary unit.