Related papers: The Glass Transition of Thin Polymer Films: Some Q…
We have investigated the reduction of the glass transition temperature, $T_g$, for thin supported films of particularly small molecular weight ($M_W$ = 2 kg/mol) polystyrene, and found good agreement with earlier studies on larger…
Glass transition process gets affected in ultrathin films having thickness comparable to the size of the molecules. We observe systematic broadening of glass transition temperature (Tg) as the thickness of the polymer film reduces below the…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that the glass transition temperature of thin polymer films can be shifted as compared to the same polymer in the bulk, the amplitude and the sign of this effect depending on the interaction between the…
The glass transition temperature and its connection to statistical properties of confined and free-standing polymer films of varying thickness containing unentangled to highly entangled bead-spring chains are studied by molecular dynamics…
The glass transition temperature ($T_g$) of polymer thin films has been a subject of controversy in the last two decades. (Pseudo)thermodynamic determinations of $T_g$ generally suggest a significant depression, whereas the molecular…
The viscoelastic properties of thin polymeric films represent a central issue, especially for nanotechnological applications. In particular, it is highly relevant the dependence of viscoelasticity on the temperature. For polystyrene it is…
We present a modified version of our "sliding model", where chain arcs, between two contacts at the surface, may move if all the barriers along the arc are weaker than a certain threshold.An important advance of the revised model is that…
The immense dependence of the glass transition temperature $T_g$ on molecular weight $M$ is one of the most fundamentally and practically important features of polymer glass formation. Here, we report on molecular dynamics simulation of…
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…
We present results of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations for a non-entangled polymer melt confined between two completely smooth and repulsive walls, interacting with inner particles via the potential $U_{\rm wall}\myeq (\sigma/z)^9$,…
The glass transition is a long-standing unsolved problem in materials science. For polymers, our understanding of glass-formation is particularly poor due to the added complexity of chain connectivity and flexibility; structural relaxation…
Glass transition behavior of nanoscopically thin polymer films is investigated by means of molecular dynamics simulations. A thin polymer film that is composed of bead-spring model chains and supported on an idealized, fcc lattice substrate…
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…
The glass transition temperature $T_g$ 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 dielectric…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations of an idealized polymer melt surrounding a nanoscopic filler particle to probe the effects of a filler on the local melt structure and dynamics. We show that the glass transition temperature $T_g$…
Thin polymer films have striking dynamical properties that differ from their bulk counterparts. With the simple geometry of a stepped polymer film on a substrate, we probe mobility above and below the glass transition temperature…
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…
In an earlier preprint (V. V. Ginzburg, O. V. Gendelman, R. Casalini, and A. Zaccone, arxiv:2409.17291), we demonstrated that the dynamic (relaxation time) and volume equations of state for many amorphous polymers are near-universal -- each…
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…
The origin of the dramatic slowdown of dynamics near the glass transition temperature (Tg) remains a long-standing fundamental and unresolved issue in soft condensed matter. While single-molecule (SM) experiments using fluorescent probes…