Designing nanoscale polymeric structures: examining the breakdown of the Cahn-Hilliard lengthscale spinodal prediction

DOI

Demixing of polymer blends via spinodal decomposition provides an effective means to generate polymer bicontinuous nanostructures with applications in membranes for separations to photovoltaics. Predicting demixed phase sizes can be achieved by the well-known Cahn-Hilliard (CHC) theory, which is however expected to break down approaching molecular dimensions. Motivated by both fundamental science and the precise design of nanomaterials, we will experimentally examine this limit (<<50 nm phases) with a combination of one- and two-phase SANS experiments for a model system (PMMAd/SCPE) with rapidly varying interactions with temperature around Ts. This proposal will this examine the limits of polymer demixing based on what is arguably one of the most significant condensed matter theories of the 20th century.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.92919087
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/92919087
Provenance
Creator Dr Robert Dalgliesh; Professor Joao Cabral; Mr Yutaka Aoki; Dr Haoyu Wang; Dr William Sharratt; Professor Dame Julia Higgins
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2021
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Photon- and Neutron Geosciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2018-05-14T23:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2018-05-18T07:16:19Z