Search results for "polymer blend"
showing 10 items of 219 documents
Polymeric alloys: Model materials for the understanding of the statistical thermodynamics of mixtures
1997
Polymeric materials find industrial applications that are comparable to those of metals and ceramics.1 In addition to the great variability via the synthesis of various monomers and the choice of the degree of polymerization (N), alloying of polymers finds increasing attention for combining favorable materials properties.1,2 But polymeric (binary) alloys (A,B) of flexible polymers with chain lengths NA, NB are also most interesting for testing theoretical concepts: changing NA, NB one controls the entropy of mixing, keeping intermolecular forces invariant. Variation of these control parameters thus allows stringent tests of the theories on miscibility, unmixing etc. Furthermore, the large s…
Unmixing of Polymer Blends Confined in Ultrathin Films: Crossover between Two-Dimensional and Three-Dimensional Behavior
2006
The interplay between chain conformations and phase separation in binary symmetric polymer mixtures confined into thin films by "neutral" hard walls (i.e., walls that do not preferentially attract or repel one of the two components of the mixture) is studied by Monte Carlo simulations. Using the bond fluctuation model on a simple cubic lattice in the semi grand canonical ensemble, we locate the critical temperature of demixing via finite size scaling methods for a wide range of chain lengths (16/= N/= 256 effective monomers per chain) and film thicknesses (2/= D/= 19 lattice spacings). Simultaneously, we investigate the geometrical structure of the chains, showing that despite using melt de…
Processability and Properties of Re-Graded, Photo-Oxidized Post-Consumer Greenhouse Films
2005
The recycling of post‐consumer plastics leads, in general, to secondary materials having properties worse than those of the reclaimed material and certainly worse than those of the same virgin polymer. This is because of the degradation undergone by the objects during their use and because of the thermo‐mechanical degradation undergone during the reprocessing operations. The change of the molecular architecture is responsible for this worsening of properties. The use of stabilizing systems can slow the degradation during the melt processing but cannot give any improvement of the final properties of the material. In order to enhance the properties of the recycled plastics, some rebuilding of…
Re-gradation of Photo-oxidized Post-consumer Greenhouse Films
2005
The degradation undergone by the polymers during their use and because of the thermo-mechanical degradation undergone during the reprocessing operations provokes, among other effects, the decrease of the molecular weight. The change of the molecular architecture is responsable for the deterioration of all the properties. In order to restore the properties of post-consumer recycled plastics, some rebuilding of the molecular structure is necessary. In this work, photo-oxidized films for greenhouses were reprocessed in presence of additives able to react with the polyethylene in order to form branching and cross-linking, improving the properties of these post-consumer plastic.
Statistical properties of linear-hyperbranched graft copolymers prepared via "hypergrafting" of AB(m) monomers from linear B-functional core chains: …
2015
The reaction of ABm monomers (m = 2, 3) with a multifunctional Bf-type polymer chain ("hypergrafting") is studied by coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. The ABm monomers are hypergrafted using the slow monomer addition strategy. Fully dendronized, i.e., perfectly branched polymers are also simulated for comparison. The degree of branching of the molecules obtained with the "hypergrafting" process critically depends on the rate with which monomers attach to inner monomers compared to terminal monomers. This ratio is more favorable if the ABm monomers have lower reactivity, since the free monomers then have time to diffuse inside the chain. Configurational chain properties are also…
Structured Nanoparticles from the Self-Assembly of Polymer Blends through Rapid Solvent Exchange
2017
Molecular dynamics simulations were performed to study systematically the rapid mixing of a polymer blend in solution with a miscible nonsolvent. In agreement with experiments, we observe that polymers self-assemble into complex nanoparticles, such as Janus and core-shell particles, when the good solvent is displaced by the poor solvent. The emerging structures can be predicted on the basis of the surface tensions between the polymers as well as between the polymers and the surrounding liquid. Furthermore, the size of the nanoparticles can be independently tuned through the mixing rate and the polymer concentration in the feed stream; meanwhile, the composition of the nanoparticles can be c…
Effect of stress and temperature on the thermomechanical degradation of a PE-LD/OMMT nanocomposites
2014
Thermomechanical degradation of nanocomposites is a topical issue that has not been fully investigated as demonstrated by the low number of papers available in the literature regarding this spe- cific aspect. In particular, with regards to low density polyethylene/clay nanocomposites, the degrada- tion behavior is very complex since it involves the degradation paths of both the polymer matrix and the organomodified nanoclay. In the present work, the effects of mechanical stress and temperature on the thermomechanical behavior of PE-LD/organomodified clay nanocomposites and the degradation paths were investigated by rheological, FT-IR and mechanical methods. The results have shown that the t…
Compatibilization of polyethylene/polyamide 6 blend nanocomposite films
2015
Polymer blends of incompatible components need to undergo compatibilization, in order to give rise to a blend with good physical properties. At the same way, polymer/clay nanocomposites show this problem because of different chemical nature of the polymer matrix and of the clay. Compatibilization is therefore more necessary if an incompatible polymer blend is filled with an organomodified clay in order to give a final material with good properties. In this work, a polyethylene/polyamide 6 blend filled with an organomodified clay has been compatibilized with a maleic anhydride grafted SEBS (styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene) copolymer and a glicidylmethacrylate-ethylene copolymer. The result…
Neutron reflectometry studies on the interfacial width between polystyrene and various poly(alkylmethacrylates)
1999
From neutron reflectometry we have obtained the interfacial width (typically 2-8 nm) between incompatible polymers above the glass transition temperatures. The investigated polymer bilayers consist of a deuterated polystyrene top layer and various poly(alkylmethacrylates) as a bottom layer. We obtained interesting effects of the length of the alkyl group on the interfacial width. Using mean-field theory we calculate Flory-Huggins-Stavermann interaction parameters X from the interfacial width a I data. These results are compared with investigations of the interfacial width between deuterated poly(methylmethacrylate) and respective polyalkyl-methacrylates.
Relative strength of H-bonding groups on biodegradable polymer-based blends in solution
2006
The intermolecular hydrogen bonding interactions between poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) and poly(styrene-co-vinyl phenol) copolymers with mutual solvent epichlorohydrin were thoroughly investigated by steady-state fluorescence and viscosity techniques. Fluorescence spectroscopy along with viscosity technique was used to asses the intermolecular hydrogen bonding between poly-(3-hydroxybutyrate) and its blends with five copolymer samples of styrene–vinyl phenol, containing different proportions of vinyl phenol but similar average molecular weight and polydispersity index. In the case of very low OH contents (2–4 mol %), as expected, both components of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) and poly(styrene-co-4-vi…