Sunday, November 16, 2008

Putting the Squeeze on Polymers is easier at the Nanoscale

Trinity College Dublin

A new discovery about polymer flow at the smallest scales.

According to Dr Graham Cross, film thickness and molecular intertwining are crucial: “You can think of polymer materials like cooked spaghetti, with long chains knitted together to form a tough substance. However, when the polymer film is made thinner and thinner, the polymer chains lie-down on a plane instead of becoming tangled in three dimensional space. The polymer chains begin to behave in isolation as they find it increasingly difficult to intertwine with each other. Their viscosity is decreased and this increases the flow.”

http://www.tcd.ie/Communications/news/pressreleases/pressRelease.php?headerID=1001&pressReleaseArchive=2009

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