Journal
MACROMOLECULES
Volume 47, Issue 5, Pages 1801-1809Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/ma402590n
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology [24750066, 23700555, 25248037]
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [13J00449, 25248027, 23700555, 24750066] Funding Source: KAKEN
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Tetra-PEG gels are classified to near-ideal networks with significantly low inhomogeneities, which were confirmed by small-angle neutron scattering (SANS). In this study, we systematically introduced two types of defects into Tetra-PEG gels and investigated effects of defects on structure. First, we prepared defect-rich networks by simply reducing prepolymer concentration, and observed the evolution of network structure by time-resolved SANS during gelation process. In this case, both the scattering intensity and the correlation length increased with reaction time in the phi < phi* region, while they scarcely changed in the phi > phi* region. Here, phi and phi* are the polymer volume fractions at observation and that at chain-overlap concentration, respectively. Second, we prepared p-tuned Tetra-PEG gels by tuning the reaction probability, p, and soaked them in water to expose the inhomogeneities. It was revealed that SANS profiles of as-prepared gels did not change noticeably, while those of swollen gels systematically changed with decreasing p. On the basis of these results, we discuss the relationship between the defects of polymer network and inhomogeneities by using simple schematic pictures of polymer network.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available