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Search Publications by: Kathryn L. Beers (Fed)

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Displaying 1 - 25 of 97

Highly Versatile Strategy for the Production of Telechelic Polyolefins

March 3, 2022
Author(s)
Aaron Burkey, Danyon Fischbach, Kathryn L. Beers, Charlotte Wentz, Lawrence Sita
A general and versatile synthetic strategy for producing practical quantities of a wide range of phenyl-groupterminated hetero- and homotelechelic semicrystalline polyethenes and amorphous atactic and semicrystalline isotactic poly(α-olefins) is reported

MALDI TOF MS Analysis of Chan End Functonalized Polymers

October 12, 2021
Author(s)
Kathleen M. Flynn, Barry J. Bauer, Kathryn Beers, S Bencherif, H M. Byrd, Sheng Lin-Gibson
Recently, we and other research laboratories have developed methods whereby an organic species is covalently attached to the polymer forming an organic salt to analyze by matrix assisted laser desorption ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI

Cutting to Measure the Elasticity and Fracture of Soft Gels

August 31, 2020
Author(s)
Teresa T. Duncan, Joel M. Sarapas, Adrian P. Defante, Kathryn Beers, Edwin Chan
The fracture properties of very soft and/or brittle materials are challenging to measure directly due to the limitations of existing fracture testing methods. To address this issue, we introduce a razorblade-initiated fracture test (RIFT) to measure the

Design and Characterization of an Architecturally ‘Perfect’ Family of Linear Low-Density Polyethylenes (LLDPEs) by Multi-Detector Size Exclusion Chromatography

March 27, 2020
Author(s)
Sara V. Orski, Luke Kassekert, Wesley Farrell, Grace A. Kenlaw, Marc Hillmyer, Kathryn L. Beers
Separations of commercial polyethylenes, which often involve mixtures and copolymers of linear, short-chain, and long-chain branched chains, can be very challenging to optimize as species with similar hydrodynamic sizes or solubility often co-elute in

Precision, Tunable Deuterated Polyethylene via Polyhomologation

July 22, 2019
Author(s)
Wesley Farrell, Sara Orski, Anthony Kotula, Kathryn Beers, Daniel Baugh
Polyhomologation (also known as "C1 polymerization") of a deuterated ylide has been performed, which yields linear polyethylene of high deuterium content. Copolymerization with the protonated analog allows for the preparation of sta-tistical copolymers, in

Polymer Identification of Plastic Debris Ingested by Pelagic-phase Sea Turtles in the Central Pacific

September 12, 2018
Author(s)
Melissa R. Jung, George H. Balazs, Thierry M. Work, T. T. Jones, Sara Orski, Viviana Rodriguez, Kathryn Beers, S. A. Abriola, K. D. Hyrenbach, Brenda A. Jensen, Jennifer Lynch
Pelagic Pacific sea turtles eat large quantities of plastic. We identified the polymers ingested by 37 olive ridley, 9 green and 4 loggerhead sea turtles caught as bycatch in Pacific longline fisheries using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

Validation of ATR FT-IR to identify polymers of plastic marine debris, including those ingested by marine organisms

January 3, 2018
Author(s)
Melissa R. Jung, F. D. Horgen, Sara Orski, Viviana Rodriguez Cardenas, Kathryn Beers, George H. Balazs, T. T. Jones, Thierry M. Work, Kayla C. Brignac, Sarah-Jeanne Royer, K. D. Hyrenbach, Brenda A. Jensen, Jennifer Lynch
Polymer identification of plastic marine debris can help identify its sources, degradation, and fate. We optimized and validated a fast, simple, and accessible technique, attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR FT-IR), to

Surface interaction parameter measurement of solvated polymers via model end-tethered chains

August 11, 2017
Author(s)
Richard J. Sheridan, Sara V. Orski, Ronald L. Jones, Sushil K. Satija, Kathryn L. Beers
We present a method for the direct measurement of the relative energy of interaction between a solvated polymer and a solid interface. By tethering linear chains covalently to the surface, we ensured the idealized and constant configuration of polymer

Advances in Next-Generation Polyolefin Standard Reference Materials

May 17, 2017
Author(s)
Sara V. Orski, Wesley S. Farrell, Andre M. Striegel, Kathryn L. Beers
NIST’s approach to modernizing its synthetic polymer reference materials is to target precise and robust synthetic methods, making homogeneous standards than can be easily tailored to include desired chemistry, molar mass, and topography. This strategy

Ultraviolet/Ozone as a tool to control grafting density in surface-initiated controlled-radical polymerizations via ablation of bromine

July 21, 2016
Author(s)
Richard J. Sheridan, Sara V. Orski, Shinichiro Muramoto, Christopher M. Stafford, Kathryn L. Beers
We used an ultraviolet-ozone (UVO) cleaner to create substrates for atom-transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) with varying surface initiator coverage. We collected complementary time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and X-ray

An azeotropic cross-linked styrene-methacrylate network formed through rapid visible-light photo- polymerization

July 15, 2016
Author(s)
Yin Yang, Aaron A. Urbas, Andres Gonzalez-Bonet, Richard J. Sheridan, Jonathan E. Seppala, Kathryn L. Beers, Jirun Sun
A system containing well-defined functional material, a clinically practical procedure to make the material in situ, and proper analytical tools for chemical structure and kinetic studies is appealing, but currently unavailable. Herein, we introduce an all

STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIALS FOR THE POLYMERS INDUSTRY

May 24, 2016
Author(s)
Walter G. McDonough, Sara Orski, Charles M. Guttman, Kalman Migler, Kathryn L. Beers
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides science, industry, and government with a central source of well-characterized materials certified for chemical composition or for some chemical or physical property. These materials are

Bottom Up Approaches to Improved Polyolefin Measurements

February 4, 2016
Author(s)
Sara Orski, Thomas W. Rosch, Anthony Kotula, Richard J. Sheridan, Frederick R. Phelan Jr., Kalman Migler, Chad R. Snyder, Luis F. Vargas Lara, Jack F. Douglas, Kathryn L. Beers
As a class of materials, polyolefins remain the largest production volume polymer in the world, as well as a highly desirable medium from which to engineer high performance and advanced properties for new applications. After decades of research, there are

Design and Implementation of Two-Dimensional Polymer Adsorption Models: Evaluating the Stability of Candida Antartica Lipase B at Solid-Support Interfaces by QCM-D

January 4, 2013
Author(s)
Sara V. Orski, Santanu Kundu, Richard Gross, Kathryn L. Beers
A two-dimensional model of a solid-supported enzyme catalyst bead is fabricated on a quartz crystal microbalance sensor to measure in situ stability and mechanical properties of Candida Antartica Lipase B (CAL B) layers under varied conditions relating to