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Molecular simulation of ultrathin polymeric films near the glass transition
J A Torres1, P F Nealey, J J de Pablo
1Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|October 6, 2000
Abstract:
Properties such as the glass transition temperature ( T(g)) and the diffusion coefficient of ultrathin polymeric films are shown to depend on the dimensions of the system. In this work, a hard-sphere molecular dynamics methodology has been applied to simulate such systems. We investigate the influence that substrates have on the behavior of thin polymer films; we report evidence suggesting that, depending on the strength of substrate-polymer interactions, the glass transition temperature for a thin film can be significantly lower or higher than that of the bulk.