Issue 56, 2016, Issue in Progress

Polymer crystal nucleation with confinement-enhanced orientation dominating the formation of nanohybrid shish-kebabs with multiple shish

Abstract

Nanofillers with small lateral size can induce the formation of nanohybrid shish-kebab (NHSK) structures in polymer solution, which have a variety of potential applications. We performed dynamic Monte Carlo simulations to investigate polymer crystallization behaviors induced by aligned anisotropic filler networks. An unexpected NHSK structure with multiple shish is observed. The aligned fillers act as multiple shish and the polymer crystal lamellae form kebabs. Further detection reveals that crystal nucleation firstly occurs inside the filler networks due to the high polymer density and segmental orientation. Then, the nuclei grow to connect the fillers to finally form the NHSK structure with multiple shish. The presence of filler networks imposes confinement effects on the conformations and dimensions of chains inside, forces those chains to orient along the long axis of the fillers, reduces the conformational entropy, thus resulting in stronger nucleation ability of the chains inside. The nucleation mechanism can be also applied to interpret the formation process of the shish-kebab structure with multiple shish formed in sheared polymer melts, which was observed by Hsiao et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2005, 94, 117802).

Graphical abstract: Polymer crystal nucleation with confinement-enhanced orientation dominating the formation of nanohybrid shish-kebabs with multiple shish

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
17 Feb 2016
Accepted
12 May 2016
First published
18 May 2016

RSC Adv., 2016,6, 50451-50459

Polymer crystal nucleation with confinement-enhanced orientation dominating the formation of nanohybrid shish-kebabs with multiple shish

Y. Nie, T. Hao, Y. Wei and Z. Zhou, RSC Adv., 2016, 6, 50451 DOI: 10.1039/C6RA04264C

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements