Playing with Entanglements to Structure Polymer Materials

Entanglements are known to dominate the rheological properties of long chain polymer melts and dense solutions. Their properties and consequences lead to the generally accepted and well established reptation/tube model, which is at the basis of our understanding of many properties and processes. However, beyond analysing their effects and understanding the very nature of entanglements, one also can take the approach to use them to manipulate and structure materials. The talk will give a few such examples ranging from melts of non-entangled to very long, highly entangled polymer systems. By appropriately mapping chemical chain lengths onto idealized bead spring models one can (semi-) quantitatively compare simulation and experiment and predict new materials. Based on predictions from simulations we recently prepared stable nanoporous polymer films just by mechanical deformation. Furthermore, we applied a new data driven approach to determine the glass transition temperature of polymer melts and (ultra) thin films.<br/><br/>Free Standing Dry and Stable Nanoporous Polymer Films Made through Mechanical Deformation<br/>HP Hsu, MK Singh, Y Cang, H Thérien-Aubin, M Mezger, R Berger, I Lieberwirth, G Fytas, K Kremer<br/>Adv. Sci. 2023, 2207472<br/>Data-driven identification and analysis of the glass transition in polymer melts<br/>A Banerjee, HP Hsu, K Kremer, O Kukharenko<br/>ACS Macro Lett. 2023, 12, 679−684<br/>Glass transition of disentangled and entangled polymer melts: Single-chain-nanoparticles approach<br/>MK Singh, M Hu, Y Cang, HP Hsu, H Therien-Aubin, K Koynov, G Fytas, K Landfester, K Kremer<br/>Macromolecules 2020, 53, 7312-7321