Experimental Evidence for a New Parameter to Control the Glass Transition of Confined Polymers

Journal Article · Fri Apr 20 00:00:00 EDT 2007 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.98.165701· OSTI ID:20951259

Srivastava, S; Basu, J K ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012 (India)

Polymer nanocomposites can be used to study confinement effects on the polymer glass transition temperature (T{sub g}) in a controlled manner by varying interparticle spacing. Using gold nanoparticles in polymethylmethacrylate, we show how the polymer T{sub g} can be tuned by variation of the nanoparticle-polymer interface width ({sigma}), keeping interparticle spacing fixed. We report the first experimental observation of a crossover in the sign of T{sub g} deviation for confined polymers by variation of {sigma} and propose a model to explain the dependence of crossover width on the spatial extent of cooperatively rearranging regions.

• OSTI ID: 20951259
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 98, Issue 16; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.165701; (c) 2007 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
COMPOSITE MATERIALS
GLASS
GOLD
INTERFACES
NANOSTRUCTURES
PARTICLES
POLYMERS
TRANSITION TEMPERATURE