Related papers: Reduction of the Glass Transition Temperature in P…
The dynamic and static properties of a supercooled (non-entangled) polymer melt are investigated via molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The system is confined between two completely smooth and purely repulsive walls. The wall-to-wall…
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…
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…
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…
We present Molecular Dynamics simulations of the thermal glass transition in a dense model polymer liquid. We performed a comparative study of both constant volume and constant pressure cooling of the polymer melt. Great emphasis was laid…
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…
Dielectric relaxation spectroscopy 10^-1 Hz to 10^6 Hz) is employed to study the molecular dynamics of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS, Mw=1.7 10^5 g/mol and Mw=9.6 10^4 g/mol as grafted films with thicknesses d below and above the radius of…
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 $T_g$…
We present computer simulations of a simple bead-spring model for polymer melts with intramolecular barriers. By systematically tuning the strength of the barriers, we investigate their role on the glass transition. Dynamic observables are…
We develop the Elastically Collective Nonlinear Langevin Equation theory to investigate, for the first time, glassy dynamics in capped metallic glass thin films. Finite-size effects on the spatial gradient of structural relaxation time and…
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 review recent results from computer simulation studies of polymer glasses, from chain dynamics around the glass transition temperature Tg to the mechanical behaviour below Tg. These results clearly show that modern computer simulations…
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…
The $\alpha$-process (segmental motion) of thin polystyrene films supported on glass substrate has been investigated in a wider frequency range from 10$^{-3}$ Hz to 10$^4$ Hz using dielectric relaxation spectroscopy and thermal expansion…
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…
We examine the effects of confinement on the dynamics of premelted films driven by thermomolecular pressure gradients. Our approach is to modify a well-studied setting in which the thermomolecular pressure gradient is driven by a…
We present results from Molecular Dynamics simulations of the thermal glass transition in a dense polymer melt. In previous work we compared the simulation data with the idealized version of mode coupling theory (MCT) and found that the…
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…
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…
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…