Search results for "soft"

Monte Carlo simulation of the glass transition in polymer melts: An application of MCT

1995

Abstract This paper reviews the results of a large scale Monte Carlo simulation for the dynamics of a supercooled polymer melt. The dynamics of the melt was studied by means of the time evolution of the incoherent intermediate scattering function φs q(t), which was monitored over seven decades in time. In an intermediate time window it is possible to describe the decay of φs q(t) quantitatively in the framework of mode-coupling theory, provided the extended version of the theory is used.

Pressure-induced formation of diblock copolymer "micelles" in supercritical fluids. A combined study by small angle scattering experiments and mean-f…

2004

We developed a simple time-dependent mean-field theory to describe the phase separation kinetics of either homopolymers or AB-diblock copolymers in supercritical (SC) fluids. The model, previously used to describe the phase behavior of AB-block copolymers under the assumption of strong solvent selectivity for just one copolymer chain, has been extended to study the kinetics of the phase separation process. Time resolved small angle x-ray scattering (TR-SAXS) measurements have been performed on different AB-diblock copolymers containing a perfluorinated chain and dissolved in SC-CO2. The data obtained over a wide range of pressure and temperature confirm our theoretical predictions. Particul…

1982

The electro-optical properties of liquid crystalline polymers with polar mesogenic units in the side chain were investigated. It could be shown, that in an electric field, they show all effects known from low molecular weight liquid crystals, e.g. the Freedericksz-transition, the DAP-effect, the formation of William's domain, and the dynamic scattering. The optical response times are slightly longer than for low molecular weight liquid crystals, but in some cases at higher temperatures as short as 200 ms. By comparison of different polymers and some corresponding liquid crystalline monomers, it is found that: (1) the difference between the measuring temperature and the glass transition temp…

Self-Diffusion in Concentrated Colloid Suspensions Studied by Digital Video Microscopy of Core−Shell Tracer Particles

1998

Optical video microscopy and digital image processing have been used to study the self-diffusion of colloidal particles with a hard-sphere potential. The colloid particles consist of cross-linked polymers and are dispersed in a good solvent to avoid aggregation. To investigate single particle motion in highly concentrated dispersions, a host−tracer system, consisting of two different kinds of polymer particles, has been designed:  the host particles are made of poly-t-butylacrylate (with ethanedioldiacrylate as cross-linker) and have the same refractive index as the employed solvent, 4-fluorotoluene. The tracer particles have a core−shell structure with a polystyrene core (cross-linked with…

Fractional viscoelastic characterization of laminated glass beams under time-varying loading

2021

Abstract Laminated glass is a composite made of elastic glass layers sandwiching thin viscoelastic polymeric interlayers. There are several types of polymers, traditionally modelled as linear viscoelastic materials using a Prony’s series of units in the Maxwell-Wiechert arrangement. We show that one single element with fractional viscoelastic properties (two constitutive parameters that depend on environmental temperature), is sufficient to provide an accurate description of the polymer response under arbitrary time-varying actions. This is a great advantage over the classical viscoelastic characterization, which requires at least 10–15 terms in the Prony’s series, each one characterized by…

Testing of a constitutive equation for entangled networks by elongational and shear data of polymer melts

1973

An entangled network such as a polymer melt or a concentrated solution is here described by a set of two simultaneous equations. One of them is a balance of entanglements, the other gives the stress in the classical form of aMaxwell equation.

Interaction between a water-in-oil microemulsion and a linear-dendritic poly(propylene oxide)–polyglycerol block copolymer

2011

We present small angle scattering and dielectric spectroscopy results on the influence of an amphiphilic diblock copolymer on the structure and dynamics of a microemulsion. We use a water-in-oil (w/o) droplet microemulsion based on the anionic surfactant AOT (sodium bis(2-ethylhexyl) sulfosuccinate), that forms spherical water droplets coated by a monolayer of AOT dispersed in the continuous oil matrix. The studied polymer consists of a hydrophobic poly(propylene oxide) (PPO) block and a hydrophilic hyperbranched polyglycerol with 74 glycerol units (NG74). Combining small angle neutron scattering (SANS) and small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) we find that the droplet structure is preserved …

Structure of bottle-brush brushes under good solvent conditions: a molecular dynamics study.

2011

We report a simulation study for bottle-brush polymers grafted on a rigid backbone. Using a standard coarse-grained bead-spring model extensive molecular dynamics simulations for such macromolecules under good solvent conditions are performed. We consider a broad range of parameters and present numerical results for the monomer density profile, density of the untethered ends of the grafted flexible backbones and the correlation function describing the range that neighboring grafted bottle-brushes are affected by the presence of the others due to the excluded volume interactions. The end beads of the flexible backbones of the grafted bottle-brushes do not access the region close to the rigid…

Confinement-induced screening of hydrodynamic interactions and spinodal decomposition: Multiscale simulations of colloid-polymer mixtures

2012

Phase separation kinetics of a colloid-polymer mixture confined between two planar repulsive walls is studied by a multiscale simulation approach. Colloids and polymers are described by particles interacting with continuous potentials suitable for molecular-dynamics simulation, while hydrodynamic interactions mediated by solvent particles are accounted for by the multiparticle collision dynamics method. Varying the distance D between the walls and the character of the boundary conditions, the interplay of structure formation parallel and perpendicular to the walls is studied, and the effect of hydrodynamics on the growth of domain size ld(t) with time t is elucidated. Only for slip boundary…

Microfluidic Pumping by Micromolar Salt Concentrations

2017

An ion-exchange-resin-based microfluidic pump is introduced that utilizes trace amounts of ions to generate fluid flows. We show experimentally that our pump operates in almost deionized water for periods exceeding 24h and induces fluid flows of um/s over hundreds of um. This flow displays a far-field, power-law decay which is characteristic of two-dimensional (2D) flow when the system is strongly confined and of three-dimensional (3D) flow when it is not. Using theory and numerical calculations we demonstrate that our observations are consistent with electroosmotic pumping driven by umol/L ion concentrations in the sample cell that serve as 'fuel' to the pump. Our study thus reveals that t…