Search results for "polymers"

Recycling of a starch-based biodegradable polymer

2002

A new starch-based polymeric system, ZI1OU from Novamont, mainly composed of starch and polycaprolactone, was reprocessed several times in an extruder to investigate the recyclability of this biodegradable polymer. A previous investigation of the thermomechanical degradation in a mixer has been also done. The degradation is mostly due to the thermal stress but the presence of the mechanical stress strongly increases the degradation kinetic. During melt processing two concurrent processes take place: the first is the degradation, i.e. the breaking and shortening of polymeric chains, mostly occurring in the PCL phase; the second is the formation of some crosslinked structure in the starch pha…

Processing and mechanical properties of organic filer-polypropylene composites

2005

The addition of organic fillers into thermoplastic polymers is an interesting issue, which has had growing consideration and experimentation during the last years. It can give rise to several advantages. First, the cost of these fillers is usually very low. Also, the organic fillers are biodegradable (thus contributing to an improved environmental impact), and finally, some mechanical and thermomechanical properties can be enhanced. In this study, the effect of the addition of different organic fillers on the mechanical properties and processability of an extrusion-grade polypropylene were investigated. The organic fillers came from natural sources (wood, kenaf, and sago) and were compared …

Self-Assembly of Supramolecular Polymers of N-Centered Triarylamine Trisamides in the Light of Circular Dichroism: Reaching Consensus between Electro…

2020

The self-assembly of chiral supramolecular polymers is an intricate process that spans a wide range of length scales. Circular dichroism techniques are ideal to study this process as they provide information on the molecular scale but are at the same time also sensitive probes of the long-range interactions that control the growth and morphology of these polymers. As yet, Electronic Circular Dichroism that uses electronic transitions as a probe has by far been the method of choice while Vibrational Circular Dichroism, which uses vibrational transitions to probe structure, is much less employed. Here, we report experimental and theoretical studies of the self-assembly of helical supramolecul…

Methods for Determining the Thermal Transfer in Phase-Changing Materials (PCMs).

2020

A very important issue that needs to be solved as simply and correctly as possible is how to establish the thermal performance of phase-changing materials (PCM). The undertaken researches have analyzed the values of the thermal performances of the PCM taking into account the method of finite elements and the experimental research, respectively, based on a modern measurement system that was designed and implemented. Butyl stearate which has been encapsulated through complex coacervation in polymethyl methacrylate has been used as a PCM. Samples were made containing 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% PCM, respectively, within their structure. The research has established that at both the hot plate and the…

Biocompatible polymers coated Solid Lipid Microparticles (SLM) for pulmonary delivery

2015

Single chain structure in thin polymer films: Corrections to Flory's and Silberberg's hypotheses

2005

Conformational properties of polymer melts confined between two hard structureless walls are investigated by Monte Carlo simulation of the bond-fluctuation model. Parallel and perpendicular components of chain extension, bond-bond correlation function and structure factor are computed and compared with recent theoretical approaches attempting to go beyond Flory's and Silberberg's hypotheses. We demonstrate that for ultrathin films where the thickness, $H$, is smaller than the excluded volume screening length (blob size), $\xi$, the chain size parallel to the walls diverges logarithmically, $R^2/2N \approx b^2 + c \log(N)$ with $c \sim 1/H$. The corresponding bond-bond correlation function d…

Effect of nanostructuration on the spin crossover transition in crystalline ultrathin films† †Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: M…

2019

Film thickness and microstructure critically affect the spin crossover transition of a 2D coordination polymer.

Warren Buffett versus Zvi Bodie: Should You Buy Or Sell Put Options?

2021

Academics and investment professionals often disagree when it comes to investment advice. Legendary investor Warren Buffett is a proponent of time diversification and firmly believes that stocks are less risky in the long run. Therefore, he often sells long-term put options instead of buying them for portfolio protection. By contrast, the famous finance professor Zvi Bodie argues that time diversification is a fallacy and, therefore, his advice to fund managers is to buy long-term portfolio insurance. In this article, we consider the optimal portfolio choice problem for a loss-averse investor. First, we demonstrate that our loss-averse investor subscribes to the principle of time diversific…

Enhancing production and cytotoxic activity of polymeric soluble FasL-based chimeric proteins by concomitant expression of soluble FasL.

2012

International audience; Membrane FasL is the natural trigger of Fas-mediated apoptosis. A soluble homotrimeric counterpart (sFasL) also exists which is very weakly active, and needs oligomerization beyond its trimeric state to induce apoptosis. We recently generated a soluble FasL chimera by fusing the immunoglobulin-like domain of the leukemia inhibitory factor receptor gp190 to the extracellular region of human FasL, which enabled spontaneous dodecameric homotypic polymerization of FasL. This polymeric soluble human FasL (pFasL) displayed anti-tumoral activity in vitro and in vivo without systemic cytotoxicity in mouse. In the present work, we focused on the improvement of pFasL, with two…

Local structural investigation of hafnia-zirconia polymorphs in powders and thin films by X-ray absorption spectroscopy

2019

Björn Matthey (Fraunhofer IKTS, Dresden) is acknowledged for providing HfO2 and ZrO2 powders on short notice after DESY’s renowned customs office punished us. Parts of this research were carried out at Petra III at DESY, a member of the Helmholtz Association (HGF). The experiments on single Si:HfO2 thin film samples were performed at the CLAESS beamline at ALBA Synchrotron with the collaboration of ALBA staff. We would like to thank Edmund Welter for assistance (in using beamline P65) and DESY for enabling this research for proposal no. 20160591 and for travel support. T.S. acknowledges the German Research Foundation (DFG) for funding this work in the frame of the project “Inferox” (project…