Traeger, Hanna Kiebala, Derek J. Calvino, Celine Sagara, Yoshimitsu Schrettl, Stephen Weder, Christoph Clough, Jess 2023-06-14 The mechanical failure of polymers remains challenging to understand and predict, as it often involves highly localised phenomena that cannot be probed with bulk characterisation techniques. Here, we present a generalisable protocol based on optical microscopy, tensile testing, and image processing that permits the spatially resolved interrogation of mechanical deformation at the molecular level around defects in mechanophore-containing polymers. The approach can be applied to a broad range of polymeric materials, mechanophores, and deformation scenarios. application/pdf https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/325328 https://folia.unifr.ch/documents/325328/files/strainmapping_acceptedmanuscript_0.pdf eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1039/D3MH00650F info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/issn/2051-6347 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess CC BY Materials Horizons. - Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 2023 Mechanics of Materials General Materials Science Mechanochromism Polymeric Materials Microscopy info:eu-repo/classification/udc/54 Microscopic strain mapping in polymers equipped with non-covalent mechanochromic motifs http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501