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Updated: May 23, 2026

Synthesis of Cyclic Polymers and Characterization of Their Diffusive Motion in the Melt State at the Single Molecule Level
Published on: September 26, 2016
Pressure-induced structural change of intermediate-range order in poly(4-methyl-1-pentene) melt
Ayano Chiba1, Nobumasa Funamori, Kazuya Nakayama
1Department of Physics, Keio University, Yokohama 223-8522, Japan. ayano@phys.keio.ac.jp
Abstract:
High-pressure in situ x-ray diffraction and specific-volume measurements on isotactic poly(4-methyl-1-pentene) melt have uncovered abrupt changes in the pressure dependence of microscopic structure as well as that of macroscopic density. The first sharp diffraction peak of the polymer melt, which is related to the intermediate-range order and is explained as resulting from the correlations between main chains, is suppressed at pressures less than 1 kbar. These changes in intermediate-range order show similarities to those seen in liquid-liquid or amorphous-amorphous transitions in simpler small molecule based systems, suggesting that this kind of phenomenon may occur in a wide range of materials.
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