Khatiwada, Shankar P.; Gohs, Uwe; Janke, Andreas; Jehnichen, Dieter; Heinrich, Gert; Adhikari, Rameshwar
Influence of electron beam irradiation on the morphology and mechanical properties of styrene/butadiene triblock copolymers
The crosslinking of a styrene/butadiene triblock copolymer via electron beam (EB) treatment and its influence on morphology and mechanical properties were studied. Different doses were applied to study the effect on the modification of polybutadiene segments of the triblock copolymers whereby the highly ordered hexagonal packed type of the morphology…
Long-Chain Hyperbranched Comb Block Copolymers: Synthesis, Microstructure, Rheology, and Thermal Behavior
López-Barrón, Carlos R.; Brant, Patrick; Shivokhin, Maksim; Lu, Jiemin; Kang, Shuhui; Throckmorton, Joseph A.; Mouton, Trent; Pham, Truyen; Savage, Rebecca C.
A series of poly(ethylene-co-acrylic acid)-cb-atactic polypropylene (EAA-cb-aPP) comb block copolymers were synthesized by grafting aPP-OH macromonomers onto a commercial EAA copolymer made by the high-pressure free radical process. The starting EAA copolymer contains 11 wt % of EAA units and has a significant amount of long chain branches. Therefore, the…
Ordered Nanostructures of Carbon Nanotube–Polymer Composites from Lyotropic Liquid Crystal Templating
Kasprzak, Christopher R.; Scherzinger, Evan T.; Sarkar, Amrita; Miao, Miranda; Porcincula, Dominique H.; Madriz, Alejandro M.; Pennewell, Zachary M.; Chau, Sophia S.; Fernando, Raymond; Stefik, Morgan; Zhang, Shanju
A series of polymer nanocomposites containing single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are prepared from polymerizable quaternary ammonium surfactants using photo-polymerization and investigated by means of polarized optical microscopy, small-angle X-ray scattering, and rheological measurements. The surfactant monomers with various alkyl chains of nonpolar tails form lyotropic liquid crystalline…
Layer charge robust delamination of organo-clays
Daab, Matthias; J. Eichstaedt, Natalie; Edenharter, Andreas; Rosenfeldt, Sabine; Breu, Josef
RSC Advances, 2018, vol 8, 50, pp. 28797-28803DOI:10.1039/C8RA05318AVisit the full articleBack to the overview
Hydrogen-Bonded Siloxane Liquid Crystals for Hybrid Nanomaterials
Nickmans, Koen; Jansma, Sjoerd O.; Hey, Daniela; Velpula, Gangamallaiah; Teyssandier, Joan; Feyter, Steven De; Schenning, Albert P. H. J.
The self-assembly of molecular inorganic/organic hybrid building blocks into ordered hierarchical nanomaterials with a tunable morphology is an enormous challenge. Here, we describe the synthesis and characterization of a novel liquid crystalline hydrogen-bonding hepta(dimethylsiloxane) azobenzene carboxylic acid dimer. This inorganic/organic hybrid dimer forms sub-5 nm lamellar features in the…
Elastic serum-albumin based hydrogels: mechanism of formation and application in cardiac tissue engineering
Amdursky, Nadav; M. Mazo, Manuel; R. Thomas, Michael; J. Humphrey, Eleanor; L. Puetzer, Jennifer; St-Pierre, Jean-Philippe; C. Skaalure, Stacey; M. Richardson, Robert; M. Terracciano, Cesare; M. Stevens, Molly
Journal of Materials Chemistry B, 2018, vol 6, 35, pp. 5604-5612DOI:10.1039/C8TB01014EVisit the full articleBack to the overview
Morphology, thermal properties and molecular dynamics of syndiotactic polystyrene (s-PS) nanocomposites with aligned graphene oxide and graphene nanosheets
Koutsoumpis, Stefanos; Klonos, Panagiotis; Raftopoulos, Konstantinos N.; Papadakis, Christine M.; Bikiaris, Dimitrios; Pissis, Polycarpos
In this work we report morphological, calorimetric and dielectric results for polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) based on syndiotactic polystyrene (s-PS) filled with graphene oxide (GO) and graphene by employing melt-mixing. The preparation of the PNCs resulted in aligning of the filler in the polymer matrix as observed by SEM and Wide…
Ring-Banded Spherulitic Crystals of Poly(3-butylthiophene) via Controlled Solvent Evaporation
Armas, Jeremy A.; Reynolds, Karina J.; Marsh, Zachary M.; Stefik, Morgan; Scott, Gregory E.; Zhang, Shanju
The preparation of ring-banded spherulites in poly(3-butylthiophene) via controlled solvent evaporation of solution-cast films is reported. The spherulites display unusual concentric ring-banded structures under both polarized and unpolarized lights. The size of the ring-banded spherulites is 300 ± 100 µm in diameter and the periodicity of the bands is 15…
Highly Entangled α-Olefin Molecular Bottlebrushes: Melt Structure, Linear Rheology, and Interchain Friction Mechanism
López-Barrón, Carlos R.; Tsou, Andy H.; Hagadorn, John R.; Throckmorton, Joseph A.
Linear viscoelastic response and melt microstructure of ultra-high molecular weight poly(α-olefins) (UHMW PO) with bottlebrush architectures, from poly(1-hexene) to poly(1-octadecene) synthesized by metal coordinative insertion polymerization, were measured as a function of side-chain length, Nsc. All these bottlebrush POs are highly entangled, with an average number of entanglements per chain,…
Ferrihydrite Nanoparticle Aggregation Induced by Dissolved Organic Matter
Gentile, Luigi; Wang, Tao; Tunlid, Anders; Olsson, Ulf; Persson, Per
Ferrihydrite (Fh) nanoparticles are omnipresent in nature and often highly mobile because of their colloidal stability. Thus, Fh serves as a vector for iron as well as associated nutrients and contaminants. Here, we demonstrate, using small-angle X-ray scattering combined with cryo-transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM), that dissolved organic matter (DOM), extracted…