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Synthesis of Cyclic Polymers and Characterization of Their Diffusive Motion in the Melt State at the Single Molecule Level
Published on: September 26, 2016
Position-Dependent Diffusion Dynamics of Entangled Polymer Melts Nanoconfined by Parallel Immiscible Polymer Films
Kyoung-Il Jo1,2, Younghoon Oh3, Tae-Ho Kim4
1Neutron Science Center, Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), Daejeon 34057, Korea.
None:
The morphological structure and dynamics of confined polymers adjacent to the polymer-polymer interface have a profound effect on determining the overall physical properties of polymer blends. We measured the diffusion dynamics of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) melts confined between polystyrene (PS) layers using neutron reflectivity. Combinations of various thicknesses of PMMA and deuterated PMMA (dPMMA) allowed us to experimentally reveal the nonmonotonic behavior of polymer mobility near the PS-PMMA interface. From the neutron reflectivity results, we found that the polymers adjacent to the immiscible polymer-polymer interface showed enhanced diffusion dynamics because of the repulsive interaction between PS and PMMA, whereas the polymer at local regions farther from the interface exhibited reduced dynamics. This is probably due to the nonspherical conformation of PMMA and spatial confinement near the PS-PMMA interface.
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