Topic details
| Topic | Smart elastomers and liquids based on self-assembling copolymers |
|---|---|
| Supervisor | Adam Strachota, PhD |
| Department | Nanostructured Polymers and Composites |
| Description | Planned is the synthesis of several types of novel smart supramolecularly assembled elastomeric materials. Their structure and morphology should be comprehensively characterized, and the smart properties explored, in order to optimize the new materials for several types of smart functions, like temperature-switchable viscoelasticity in molten or rubbery state, shape memory, or potential light-responsiveness. The elastomers also should be reprocessible. To this end, copolymers of several architectures will be synthesized and comprehensively characterized. These materials will be based on highly flexible polymer chains decorated with several types of liquid-crystalline (LC), or other crystallizing units. These will provide non-covalent and hence reversible crosslinking of the flexible chains via nano-aggregation. Secondly, additional smart properties of the whole material will arise from eventual thermotropic behaviour of the non-covalent crosslinks. The orientation of most promising polymers will be considered, in order to achieve highly anisotropic material properties. The basic and smart material properties will be investigated especially via thermo-mechanical analysis, rheological analysis (for evaluating ‘smart liquid’ properties, or thixotropy), creep and relaxation tests, self-healing tests without disruption (Mullins effect after differently long healing times), tensile tests of intact, and of previously disrupted and self-healed samples, as well as shape-memory tests. Further extensive analyses of the products will be carried out by cooperating with other departments of our Institute: especially morphology (TEM, WAXS, SAXS), chemical structure (NMR) and polarization microscopy. |
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