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Polymer Entanglement

A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2020) | Viewed by 4067

Special Issue Editor

Department of Materials, Loughborough University, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, UK
Interests: polymer; catalysis; polyolefins; organometallic chemistry
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Polymeric materials, either synthetic or natural, are nowadays ubiquitous in our daily life thanks to the large variety of properties that can be realised by modification of their structure, architecture, and assembly. Since the pioneering work of Pierre de Gennes, Sam Edwards, and Masao Doi, we know that the thermal motion of polymers, either in bulk or in concentrated solutions, is governed by the topological restriction induced by neighbouring chains, i.e., by the presence of entanglements.

The presence (or even absence!) of entanglements between macromolecules will affect chain dynamics in melt and/or solution, thus influencing the response of the material during processing, the formation and stability of micelles, and the elasticity of polymeric gels. Understanding how entanglements form with respect to the polymer’s microstructure/architecture, and how they evolve as a function of thermal or mechanical stresses, is then pivotal for the design of new and improved materials.

The present Special Issue will showcase a selection of articles reporting on recent developments in, and the current standing of, the topic of polymer entanglements, covering both experimental research and theoretical modelling aspects.

Dr. Sara Ronca
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • polymer
  • reptation
  • entanglements
  • chain dynamic
  • rheology

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

14 pages, 7349 KiB  
Article
Nanocomposites of Au/Disentangled UHMWPE: A Combined Optical and Structural Study
by Stavros X. Drakopoulos, Oreste Tarallo, Linlin Guan, Ignacio Martin-Fabiani and Sara Ronca
Molecules 2020, 25(14), 3225; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules25143225 - 15 Jul 2020
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3566
Abstract
The term disentangled refers to polymers with fewer entanglements in the amorphous regions, a metastable condition that can significantly affect the material’s properties and processing behavior. The lower entanglement density in ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (dis-UHMWPE) facilitates the solid-state processability into uniaxially-oriented specimens [...] Read more.
The term disentangled refers to polymers with fewer entanglements in the amorphous regions, a metastable condition that can significantly affect the material’s properties and processing behavior. The lower entanglement density in ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (dis-UHMWPE) facilitates the solid-state processability into uniaxially-oriented specimens reaching very high draw ratios and crystallinities. In this study, Au/dis-UHMWPE nanocomposites were formulated and processed at variable draw ratios. Polarized light microscopy suggests gold nanoparticles are oriented in arrays following the drawing of polymer chains. The structural features, upon orientation, are studied by means of Raman spectroscopy, wide- and small-angle X-ray scattering, and near-infrared spectrophotometry. Crystallinity is found to increase by 15%, as calculated by wide-angle X-ray scattering. The change in optical absorbance in the visible spectrum indicates that, with orientation, the average size of gold aggregates increases, supported quantitatively by small-angle X-ray scattering. Since the gold nanoparticles are expected to be found within amorphous chain segments, the aforementioned findings are attributed to the increase of crystallinity and thus the decrease of available (amorphous) space. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polymer Entanglement)
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