Scaling Behavior of Anisotropy Relaxation in Deformed Polymers

Published

September 11, 2018

Author(s)

Christopher N. Lam, Wen-Sheng Xu, Wei-Ren Chen, Zhe Wang, Christopher B. Stanley, Jan-Michael Y. Carrillo, David Uhrig, Weiyu Wang, Kunlun Hong, Yun Liu, Lionel Porcar, Changwoo Do, Gregory S. Smith, Bobby G. Sumpter, Yangyang Wang

Abstract

Drawing an analogy to the paradigm of quasi-elastic neutron scattering, we present a general approach for quantitatively investigating the spatiotemporal dependence of structural anisotropy relaxation in deformed polymers by using small-angle neutron scattering. Experiments and nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations on polymer melts over a wide range of molecular weights reveal that their conformational relaxation at relatively high momentum transfer Q and short time can be described by a simple scaling law, with the relaxation rate proportional to Q. This peculiar scaling behavior, which cannot be derived from the classical Rouse and tube models, is indicative of a surprisingly weak direct influence of entanglement on the microscopic mechanism of single-chain anisotropy relaxation.

Citation

Physical Review Letters

Volume

121

Issue

11

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

polymer melts, conformation relaxation, small angle neutron scattering, entanglement

Citation

Lam, C. , Xu, W. , Chen, W. , Wang, Z. , Stanley, C. , Carrillo, J. , Uhrig, D. , Wang, W. , Hong, K. , Liu, Y. , Porcar, L. , Do, C. , Smith, G. , Sumpter, B. and Wang, Y. (2018), Scaling Behavior of Anisotropy Relaxation in Deformed Polymers, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=926588 (Accessed May 1, 2024)