Related papers: Comment on Justin E. Pye and Connie B. Roth, J. Po…
The presence of a viscoelastic mechanism distinctly different from the segmental a-relaxation and the Rouse modes within the glass-rubber transition zone of polymers had been justified by theoretical considerations, and subsequently…
Freestanding thin polymer films with high molecular weights exhibit an anomalous decrease in the glass-transition temperature with film thickness. Specifically, in such materials, the measured glass-transition temperature evolves in an…
We have explored isotropically jammed states of semi-2D granular materials through cyclic compression. In each compression cycle, systems of either identical ellipses or bi-disperse disks, transition between jammed and unjammed states. We…
A simple and predictive model is put forward explaining the experimentally observed substantial shift of the glass transition temperature, Tg, of sufficiently thin polymer films. It focuses on the limit of small molecular weight, where…
The rheology of coextruded layered films of polystyrene/poly(methyl methacrylate) (PS/PMMA) has been studied with small and large amplitude oscillations at a temperature above their glass transition. While the complex viscosity remains…
In a recent paper [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 070401 (2006)] the transition rate of magnetic spin-flip of a neutral two-level atom trapped in the vicinity of a thick superconducting body was studied. In the present paper we will extend these…
The results of experimental researches of electroconductivity of PVC films, plasticized by patented modifier, at fields below the breakdown level are described. A possibility of management of the repeated transitions between two states with…
Ultrathin polymer films that are produced e.g. by spin-coating are believed to be stressed since polymers are 'frozen in' into out-of-equilibrium configurations during this process. In the framework of a viscoelastic thin film model, we…
Dewetting of ultra-thin polymer films near the glass transition exhibits unexpected front morphologies [G. Reiter, Phys. Rev. Lett., 87, 186101 (2001)]. We present here the first theoretical attempt to understand these features, focusing on…
This Letter reports an anomaly of film porosity dependence on deposition rate during physical vapor deposition - the porosity increases as deposition rate decreases. Using glancing angle deposition of Cu on SiO2 substrate, the authors show…
The structural relaxation of amorphous materials is described as arising from the superposition of elementary processes with varying activation energies. We show that it is possible to obtain the kinetic parameters of these processes from…
The glass transition temperature $T_{\rm g}$ and the temperature $T_{\alpha}$ corresponding to the peak in the dielectric loss due to the $\alpha$-process have been simultaneously determined as functions of film thickness d through…
Experiments performed in the last years demonstrated slow relaxations and aging in the conductance of a large variety of materials. Here, we present experimental and theoretical results for conductance relaxation and aging for the…
We describe a series of surface levelling experiments in glassy polystyrene (PS) of varying molecular weight. The evolution through a mobile surface layer is described by the glassy thin film equation that was introduced and used in a…
A recent hypothesis claims that the glass transition itself, though it is a very pronounced relaxation peak, is no separate relaxation process at all, but is just the breakdown of the shear modulus due to the weak elastic dipole interaction…
We theoretically investigate the kinetics of the folding transition of a single semiflexible polymer. In the folding transition, the growth rate decrease with an increase in the number of monomers in a collapsed domain, suggesting that the…
Thin polymer films have attracted attention because of both their broad range of applications and of the fundamental questions they raise regarding the dynamic response of confined polymers. These films are unstable if the temperature is…
For the development of porous materials with improved transport properties, a key missing ingredient is to determine the relations between growth kinetics, structure, and transport parameters. Here, we address these relations by studying…
On perfectly vertical surfaces, rolling is conventionally deemed impossible without external torque. While various species like geckos and spiders exhibit vertical locomotion, they cannot achieve rolling; instead, they fall. In this study,…
Searching for the ideal glass transition, we exploit the ability of glassy polymer films to explore low energy states in remarkably short time scales. We use 30 nm thick polystyrene (PS) films, which in the supercooled state basically…