0000000000411805
AUTHOR
Thomas Eckert
Probing Poly(n-butyl-methacrylate) Latex Film via Diffusion of Hydrophilic and Hydrophobic Dye Molecules
In the study of holographic grating relaxation (forced Rayleigh scattering, FRS) in nascent latex films we examined poly(n-butyl methacrylate) films using two complementary diffusing probes: a hyd...
The effect of free polymer on the glass transition dynamics of microgel colloids
Abstract From the phase behavior we establish that 1:10 crosslinked polystyrene microgel colloids in a good solvent can be considered as hard spheres whereas 1:50 crosslinked particles are slightly softer. Nevertheless, the glass transition dynamics of 1:10 microgels and a binary mixtures of 1:50 microgels can be described in both cases within the mode coupling theory for hard spheres. The only difference is that the increase of the polydispersity from about 7% to about 13% when going from the one-component system to the mixture is accompanied by a shift of the glass transition from ϕ g ≈0.56 to ϕ g ≈0.595. On addition of linear polystyrene to the 1:50 binary mixture we find a tremendous ac…
Optical experiments on a crystallizing hard-sphere–polymer mixture at coexistence
We report on the crystallization kinetics in an entropically attractive colloidal system using a combination of time resolved scattering methods and microscopy. Hard sphere particles are polystyrene microgels swollen in a good solvent (radius a=380nm, starting volume fraction 0.534) with the short ranged attractions induced by the presence of short polymer chains (radius of gyration rg = 3nm, starting volume fraction 0.0224). After crystallization, stacking faulted face centred cubic crystals coexist with about 5% of melt remaining in the grain boundaries. From the Bragg scattering signal we infer the amount of crystalline material, the average crystallite size and the number density of cry…
Scale dependent diffusion in latex films studied by photoinduced grating relaxation technique
The transition from an aqueous dispersion of polyacrylate latices into a homogeneous polymer film on drying has been studied by monitoring the diffusion of hydrophobic and hydrophilic photochromic molecular probes with the help of a holographic grating relaxation (forced Rayleigh scattering) technique. Experiments with the hydrophobic probe in wet films result in an unusual spatial scale-dependence of the apparent diffusion coefficient that degenerates into a normal scale-independent diffusion coefficient as the film dries. Employment of a two-state diffusion model allows extracting the diffusion coefficients and mean displacements of the tracer in the polymer cores of the latex particles a…