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Polymers
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Functional Surfaces/Interfaces Enabled Smart Behaviour in Soft Matter System and...
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Functional Surfaces/Interfaces Enabled Smart Behaviour in Soft Matter System and Their Engineering Applications

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2019) | Viewed by 26557

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Ben Bin Xu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Mechanical and Construction Engineering Department, Northumbria University, Newctle Upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
Interests: bio-inspired responsive materials/surfaces/structures; mechanics of thin film materials and soft matters; micro-device; flexible electronics
Dr. Sherry Chen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical and Construction Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
Interests: Smart materials; multi-scale modelling; multi-physics coupling; phase transition; instability analysis.
Dr. Yifan Li

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical and Construction Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
Interests: MEMS/NEMS; sensors and actuators; flexible electronics; micro-engineering; microfluidics (electrowetting, surface acoustic waves); lab on a chip
Dr. Sergio Gonzalez Sanchez

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical and Construction Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
Interests: light alloys; rapid solidification; shape memory alloys; mechanical properties; high-entropy alloys
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Ciro Semprebon

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK
Interests: surface wetting, complex geometries and its coupling with fluid dynamics, elastic media, Lattice Boltzmann, Monte Carlo, molecular dynamics, finite elements and immersed boundary techniques

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Inspired by nature, current approaches in surface science and engineering usually focus on creating a surface with designed physical/chemical features, e.g., chemical functionalization on the surface, hierarchical micro/nanostructured surfaces, chemical gradients, dynamical transformable surfaces by induced surface instabilities and hybrid slippery surfaces created by infusing low surface tension lubricant into microstructures. Polymers, with their elasticily and highly designable character, have been used in many ways to yield novel functional surfaces. Some perspectives have enabled engineering opportunities with smart structures in low dimensions and has implications in many different contexts, such as micro‐/nanofluidics, flexible electronics, adhesion, organic solar cells, tunable optics, wettability, and promising methods for surface patterning. Therefore, a timely Special Issue will help to catagorise the advancements and shed a light on further development.

The Special Issue of “Functional Surfaces/Interfaces Enabled Smart Behaviour in Soft Matter System and Their Engineering Applications”, will focus on the emerging, interdisciplinary smart materials and surfaces technologies with a focus on developing a fundamental understanding of the fabrication and formation of novel surface/interfaces, complying with structure–property relationships and functions that will lead to wide impacts in future engineering applications. A collection of original/review papers will be scoped with focusing on the recent progresses on: (a) Design and fabrication of smart functional surface and thin films; (b) multiscale morphological transformation enable robotic structure; (c) surface and interface deiven novel sensing and actuating structures, with a potential application in bioengineering, MEMS, bio-medical engineering and energy; (d) theoretical developments on the low dimensional smart structures; and (e) methodology and instrumental innovations to enable novel surfaces and thin film structures.

Other potentially-interesting topics related to smart surfaces/thinfilms in engineering applications are also welcomed.

Dr. Ben Bin Xu
Dr. Sherry Chen
Dr. Yifan Li
Dr. Sergio Gonzalez Sanchez
Dr. Ciro Semprebon
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

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

  • Smart surface
  • Elastic instability
  • Wetting
  • Micro-engineering
  • Autonomous structure
  • Stimuli-responsive
  • Morphological transformation
  • Robotic structure

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 7571 KiB  
Article
Interfacial Interaction Enhanced Rheological Behavior in PAM/CTAC/Salt Aqueous Solution—A Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics Study
by Dongjie Liu, Yong Li, Fei Liu, Wenjing Zhou, Ansu Sun, Xiaoteng Liu, Fei Chen, Ben Bin Xu and Jinjia Wei
Polymers 2020, 12(2), 265; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym12020265 - 25 Jan 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3438
Abstract
Interfacial interactions within a multi-phase polymer solution play critical roles in processing control and mass transportation in chemical engineering. However, the understandings of these roles remain unexplored due to the complexity of the system. In this study, we used an efficient analytical method—a [...] Read more.
Interfacial interactions within a multi-phase polymer solution play critical roles in processing control and mass transportation in chemical engineering. However, the understandings of these roles remain unexplored due to the complexity of the system. In this study, we used an efficient analytical method—a nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) simulation—to unveil the molecular interactions and rheology of a multiphase solution containing cetyltrimethyl ammonium chloride (CTAC), polyacrylamide (PAM), and sodium salicylate (NaSal). The associated macroscopic rheological characteristics and shear viscosity of the polymer/surfactant solution were investigated, where the computational results agreed well with the experimental data. The relation between the characteristic time and shear rate was consistent with the power law. By simulating the shear viscosity of the polymer/surfactant solution, we found that the phase transition of micelles within the mixture led to a non-monotonic increase in the viscosity of the mixed solution with the increase in concentration of CTAC or PAM. We expect this optimized molecular dynamic approach to advance the current understanding on chemical–physical interactions within polymer/surfactant mixtures at the molecular level and enable emerging engineering solutions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Surfaces/Interfaces Enabled Smart Behaviour in Soft Matter System and Their Engineering Applications)
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9 pages, 1356 KiB  
Article
Effects of Molecular Chain Length on the Contact Line Movement in Water/n-Alkane/Solid Systems
by Wenxiu Zheng, Chengzhen Sun, Boyao Wen, Bofeng Bai and Eric Lichtfouse
Polymers 2019, 11(12), 2081; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym11122081 - 12 Dec 2019
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3068
Abstract
The movement of the contact line in liquid-liquid-solid systems is a major phenomenon in natural and industrial processes. In particular, n-alkanes are widely occurring in the oil, soil pollution, and chemical industries, yet there is little knowledge on the effects of molecular [...] Read more.
The movement of the contact line in liquid-liquid-solid systems is a major phenomenon in natural and industrial processes. In particular, n-alkanes are widely occurring in the oil, soil pollution, and chemical industries, yet there is little knowledge on the effects of molecular chain length on the contact line movement. Here, we studied the effects of molecular chain length on the contact line movement in water/n-alkane/solid systems with different surface wettabilities. We used n-heptane (C7), n-decane (C10), and n-hexadecane (C16) as alkanes and α-quartz as the solid surface. We calculated the time-variation contact line moving velocity and also analyzed the jump frequency and the mean distance of the molecular displacement occurring within the contact line zone by molecular-kinetic theory. Molecular dynamics simulation results show that the contact line velocity decreases with increasing the chain length, originally caused by the decreasing the jump frequency and mean distance. These variations with the molecular chain length are related to the more torsions and deformations of the molecules with a longer chain length. In addition, the moving mechanism of the contact line on the same solid surface does not change at different molecular chain lengths, implying that the moving mechanism mainly depends on the three-phase wettability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Surfaces/Interfaces Enabled Smart Behaviour in Soft Matter System and Their Engineering Applications)
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Graphical abstract

16 pages, 4186 KiB  
Article
A Numerical and Experimental Study of Adhesively-Bonded Polyethylene Pipelines
by Antoine Guilpin, Geoffrey Franciere, Lewis Barton, Matthew Blacklock and Martin Birkett
Polymers 2019, 11(9), 1531; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym11091531 - 19 Sep 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 5776
Abstract
Adhesive bonding of polyethylene gas pipelines is receiving increasing attention as a replacement for traditional electrofusion welding due to its potential to produce rapid and low-cost joints with structural integrity and pressure tight sealing. In this paper a mode-dependent cohesive zone model for [...] Read more.
Adhesive bonding of polyethylene gas pipelines is receiving increasing attention as a replacement for traditional electrofusion welding due to its potential to produce rapid and low-cost joints with structural integrity and pressure tight sealing. In this paper a mode-dependent cohesive zone model for the simulation of adhesively bonded medium density polyethylene (MDPE) pipeline joints is directly determined by following three consecutive steps. Firstly, the bulk stress-strain response of the MDPE adherend was obtained via tensile testing to provide a multi-linear numerical approximation to simulate the plastic deformation of the material. Secondly, the mechanical responses of double cantilever beam and end-notched flexure test specimens were utilised for the direct extraction of the energy release rate and cohesive strength of the adhesive in failure mode I and II. Finally, these material properties were used as inputs to develop a finite element model using a cohesive zone model with triangular shape traction separation law. The developed model was successfully validated against experimental tensile lap-shear test results and was able to accurately predict the strength of adhesively-bonded MPDE pipeline joints with a maximum variation of <3%. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Surfaces/Interfaces Enabled Smart Behaviour in Soft Matter System and Their Engineering Applications)
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11 pages, 2976 KiB  
Article
Spatially Engraving Morphological Structure on a Polymeric Surface by Ion Beam Milling
by Ansu Sun, Ding Wang, Honghao Zhou, Yifan Li, Chris Connor, Jie Kong, Jining Sun and Ben Bin Xu
Polymers 2019, 11(7), 1229; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym11071229 - 23 Jul 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4133
Abstract
Polymer surface patterning and modification at the micro/nano scale has been discovered with great impact in applications such as microfluidics and biomedical technologies. We propose a highly efficient fabricating strategy, to achieve a functional polymer surface, which has control over the surface roughness. [...] Read more.
Polymer surface patterning and modification at the micro/nano scale has been discovered with great impact in applications such as microfluidics and biomedical technologies. We propose a highly efficient fabricating strategy, to achieve a functional polymer surface, which has control over the surface roughness. The key development in this fabrication method is the polymer positive diffusion effect (PDE) for an ion-bombarded polymeric hybrid surface through focused ion beam (FIB) technology. The PDE is theoretically explored by introducing a positive diffusion term into the classic theory. The conductivity-induced PDE constant is discussed as functions of substrates conductivity, ion energy and flux. The theoretical results agree well with the experiential results on the conductivity-induced PDE, and thus yield good control over roughness and patterning milling depth on the fabricated surface. Moreover, we demonstrate a controllable surface wettability in hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces (contact angles (CA) range from 108.3° to 150.8°) with different CA hysteresis values ranging from 31.4° to 8.3°. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Surfaces/Interfaces Enabled Smart Behaviour in Soft Matter System and Their Engineering Applications)
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9 pages, 2856 KiB  
Communication
Luminescent Organic Barcode Nanowires for Effective Chemical Sensors
by Jinho Choi, Seokho Kim, Jung Woon Park, Seung Hwan Lee, Young Ju Seo and Dong Hyuk Park
Polymers 2019, 11(4), 662; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym11040662 - 11 Apr 2019
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2816
Abstract
Chemical materials are sometimes harmful to the environment as well as humans, plants, and animals. Thus, high-performance sensor systems have become more important in the past few decades. To achieve pH scale sensing in nanosystems, we applied luminescence polymer nanowires with alumina oxide [...] Read more.
Chemical materials are sometimes harmful to the environment as well as humans, plants, and animals. Thus, high-performance sensor systems have become more important in the past few decades. To achieve pH scale sensing in nanosystems, we applied luminescence polymer nanowires with alumina oxide template method with electrochemical polymerization. We made polymer nanowire barcode by alternately stacking poly(3-methylthiophene) (P3MT) and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) in a nanoporous template. After polymerization, a hydrofluoric acid solvent was used to remove the template, and, for changing the pH scale, we used sodium hydroxide. We measured optical properties of each part of barcode using Raman scattering and photoluminescence and confirmed that only P3MT was changed by alkali treatment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Surfaces/Interfaces Enabled Smart Behaviour in Soft Matter System and Their Engineering Applications)
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15 pages, 4106 KiB  
Article
Interaction of Surface Energy Components between Solid and Liquid on Wettability, and Its Application to Textile Anti-Wetting Finish
by Kwanwoo Song, Jinwook Lee, Seong-O Choi and Jooyoun Kim
Polymers 2019, 11(3), 498; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym11030498 - 14 Mar 2019
Cited by 84 | Viewed by 6657
Abstract
With various options of anti-wetting finish methods, this study intends to provide basic information that can be applied in selecting a relevant anti-wetting chemical to grant protection from spreading of liquids with different surface energy profiles. With such an aim, the anti-wetting effectiveness [...] Read more.
With various options of anti-wetting finish methods, this study intends to provide basic information that can be applied in selecting a relevant anti-wetting chemical to grant protection from spreading of liquids with different surface energy profiles. With such an aim, the anti-wetting effectiveness of fluorinated coating and silane coating was investigated for liquids having different surface energy components, water (WA), methylene iodide (MI) and formamide (FA). The wetting thermodynamics was experimentally investigated by analyzing dispersive and polar component surface energies of solids and liquids. The role of surface roughness in wettability was examined for fibrous nonwoven substrates that have varied surface roughness. The presence of roughness enhanced the anti-wetting performance of the anti-wetting treated surfaces. While the effectiveness of different anti-wetting treatments was varied depending on the liquid polarities, the distinction of different treatments was less apparent for the roughened fibrous surfaces than the film surfaces. This study provides experimental validation of wetting thermodynamics and the practical interpretation of anti-wetting finishing. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Surfaces/Interfaces Enabled Smart Behaviour in Soft Matter System and Their Engineering Applications)
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