Generalized entropy theory of glass-formation in fully flexible polymer melts

Published

December 21, 2016

Author(s)

Jack F. Douglas, Wensheng Xu, Karl Freed

Abstract

The generalized entropy theory (GET) offers many insights into how molecular parameters influence polymer glass-formation. Given the fact that chain rigidity often plays a critical role in understanding the glass- formation of polymer materials, the GET was originally developed based on models of semiflexible chains and all previous calculations within the GET considered polymers with some degree of rigidity. Motivated by unexpected results from computer simulations of fully flexible polymer melts concerning the dependence of thermodynamic and dynamic properties on the cohesive interaction strength (ǫ), the present paper employs the GET to explore the influence of ǫ on glass-formation in models of polymer melts with a vanishing bending rigidity, i.e., fully flexible polymer melts. In accord with simulations, the GET for fully flexible polymer melts predicts that basic dimensionless thermodynamic properties (such as the thermal expansion coefficient and isothermal compressibility) are universal functions of the temperature scaled by ǫ in the regime of low pressures. Similar scaling behavior is also found for the configurational entropy density in the GET for fully flexible polymer melts. Moreover, we find that the characteristic temperatures of glass-formation increase linearly with ǫ and that the fragility is independent of ǫ in fully flexible polymer melts, predictions that are again entirely consistent with simulations of glass-forming polymer melts composed of fully flexible chains. Beyond an explanation of these general trends observed in simulations,the GET for fully flexible polymer melts predicts the presence of a positive residual configurational entropy at low temperatures, indicating a return to Arrhenius relaxation in the low temperature glassy state in which relaxation occurs over astronomical timescales.

Citation

Journal of Chemical Physics

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

Glass-formation, generalized entropy theory, relaxation, configurational entropy, flexible chains, residual entropy

Citation

Douglas, J. , Xu, W. and Freed, K. (2016), Generalized entropy theory of glass-formation in fully flexible polymer melts, Journal of Chemical Physics (Accessed April 18, 2024)