Related papers: Dilatational-Plasticity Opens a New Mechanistic Pa…
Polymer self-adhesion due to the interdiffusion of macromolecules has been an active area of research for several decades [70, 43, 62, 42, 72, 73, 41]. Here, we report a new phenomenon of sub-Tg, solid-state, plasticity-induced bonding;…
Bonding between polymers below the glass transition temperature through molecular-scale dilatation (or densification)-based interdiffusion of macromolecules has recently been introduced. In this mechanism, short timeframe plastic…
In many industrial processes, pieces of the same polymer material are brought into contact at a temperature above the glass transition. Interdiffusion then takes place across the interface and leads to a strengthening of the junction.…
On the basis of a previous theoretical approach to the plastic flow of highly refined materials, a physical explanation for diffusion bonding is essayed, which yields closed--form equations relating the bonding progress with time,…
Self-healing of polymer films often takes place as the molecules diffuse across a damaged region, above their melting temperature. Using molecular dynamics simulations we probe the healing of polymer films and compare the results with those…
Large-scale simulations of thermal welding of polymers are performed to investigate the rise of mechanical strength at the polymer-polymer interface with the welding time. The welding process is in the core of integrating polymeric elements…
Polymer-related materials exhibit rich glassy behaviors at different length scales due to their various molecular structures and topological constraints. Recent studies have identified transient interpenetration of the long-chain rings…
The transport of deformable particles through porous media underlies a wealth of applications ranging from filtration to oil recovery to the transport and spreading of biological agents. Using direct numerical simulations, we analyze the…
Soft matter systems are common in nature and make up nearly all the essential components necessary for life, from cells to the organelles within those cells. The ability of these soft materials to deform is crucial for the proper…
Thermal welding of polymer-polymer interfaces is important for integrating polymeric elements into devices. When two different polymers are joined, the strength of the weld depends critically on the degree of immiscibility. We perform…
Understanding how a flow turns into an amorphous solid is a fundamental challenge in statistical physics, during which no apparent structural ordering appears. In the athermal limit, the two states are connected by a well-defined jamming…
Recent experiments and simulations have demonstrated that particle-covered interfaces can exist in stable non-spherical shapes as a result of the steric jamming of the interfacially trapped particles, which confers the interface with…
Ceramics are typically brittle at ambient conditions due to their covalent or ionic bonding and limited dislocation activities. While plasticity, and occasionally superplasticity, can be achieved in ceramics at high temperatures through…
In large area micro hot embossing, the process temperature plays a critical role to both the local fidelity of microstructure formation and global uniformity. The significance of low temperature hot embossing is to improve global flatness…
The structure of polymers at solid interfaces evolves over time, but the corresponding changes in their rheological properties remain poorly understood. Here, using a home-built quartz tuning fork atomic force microscope-based…
Letting free polymers diffuse from solution into a crosslinked polymer gel is often a crucial processing step in the synthesis of multiphase polymer-based gels, e.g., core-shell microgels. Here we use coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
Thermodynamic multi-component solution solidification approach to liquid-to-glass transition is proposed and actual mechanisms underlying vitrification, other than viscous slowdown, are identified. Due to polydisperse aggregation in liquid…
Biological adhesion is a critical mechanical function of complex organisms operating at multiple scales. At the cellular scale, cell-cell adhesion is remarkably tunable to enable both cohesion and malleability during development,…
We report on the development of some process capabilities for a polymer-based, multi-layer microelectrofluidic platform, namely: the hot embossing process, metallization on polymer and polymer bonding. Hot embossing experiments were…
This paper reviews recent Monte Carlo simulation studies of the glassy behavior in thin polymer films. The simulations employ a version of the bond-fluctuation lattice model, in which the glass transition is driven by the competition…