Androsch, René; Soccio, Michelina; Lotti, Nadia; Jehnichen, Dieter; Göbel, Michael; Schick, Christoph
Enthalpy of formation and disordering temperature of transient monotropic liquid crystals of poly(butylene 2,6-naphthalate)
Melt-crystallization of poly(butylene 2,6-naphthalate) (PBN) at temperatures lower than about 160 °C follows Ostwald's rule of stages via intermediate formation of a smectic liquid crystalline phase (LC-phase). The transient LC-phase has been isolated by interruption of the isothermal crystallization process at 140 °C at sub-second timescale, and then its disordering was analyzed…
Aligning in-plane polarization multiplies piezoresponse in P(VDF-TrFE) films on graphite
Roth, Robert; Koch, Martin; Schaab, Jakob; Lilienblum, Martin; Syrowatka, Frank; Band, Tino; Thurn-Albrecht, Thomas; Dörr, Kathrin
New Journal of Physics, 2018, vol 20, 10, pp. 103044DOI:10.1088/1367-2630/aae8b6Visit the full articleBack to the overview
The Underestimated Effect of Intracrystalline Chain Dynamics on the Morphology and Stability of Semicrystalline Polymers
Schulz, Martha; Seidlitz, Anne; Kurz, Ricardo; Bärenwald, Ruth; Petzold, Albrecht; Saalwächter, Kay; Thurn-Albrecht, Thomas
Semicrystalline polymers have been classified into crystal-mobile and crystal-fixed polymers, depending on the existence or absence of intracrystalline chain dynamics. Although it was claimed that polymers with intracrystalline chain dynamics generally have a higher crystallinity, its effect on the semicrystalline morphology is not known in detail. Using a new approach…
QCM detection of molecule–nanoparticle interactions for ligand shells of varying morphology
Marsh, Zachary M.; Lantz, Kayla A.; Stefik, Morgan
Nanoparticles (NP) have widespread applications from sensing to drug delivery where much behavior is determined by the nature of the surface and the resulting intermolecular interactions with the local environment. Ligand mixtures enable continuously tunable behavior where both the composition and morphology influence molecular interactions. Mixed ligand shells form multiple…
Sulfophenylated Terphenylene Copolymer Membranes and Ionomers
Skalski, Thomas J. G.; Adamski, Michael; Britton, Benjamin; Schibli, Eric M.; Peckham, Timothy J.; Weissbach, Thomas; Moshisuki, Takashi; Lyonnard, Sandrine; Frisken, Barbara J.; Holdcroft, Steven
The copolymerization of a prefunctionalized, tetrasulfonated oligophenylene monomer was investigated. The corresponding physical and electrochemical properties of the polymers were tuned by varying the ratio of hydrophobic to hydrophilic units within the polymers. Membranes prepared from these polymers possessed ion exchange capacities ranging from 1.86 to 3.50 meq g−1 and…
Modular Synthesis and Structure Analysis of P3HT-b-PPBI Donor–Acceptor Diblock Copolymers
Heinrich, C. David; Fischer, Matthias; Thurn-Albrecht, Thomas; Thelakkat, Mukundan
While donor–acceptor block copolymers (BCPs) are widely discussed to be optimal model materials for studying the morphology-dependent processes in organic photovoltaics, the observation of the desired microphase-separated structures is rare. We present a novel modular approach for the synthesis of donor–acceptor block copolymers offering a fast and flexible way for…
Kinky DNA in solution: Small-angle-scattering study of a nucleosome positioning sequence
Schindler, Torben; González, Adrián; Boopathi, Ramachandran; Roda, Marta Marty; Romero-Santacreu, Lorena; Wildes, Andrew; Porcar, Lionel; Martel, Anne; Theodorakopoulos, Nikos; Cuesta-López, Santiago
Physical Review E, 2018, vol 98, 4, pp. 42417DOI:Back to the overview
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…
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,…
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…