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Wall slip of tridisperse polymer melts and the effect of unentangled versus weakly entangled chains

Cornell Affiliated Author(s)

Author

S.M. Sabzevari
Itai Cohen
P.M. Wood-Adams

Abstract

We characterized wall slip of tridisperse linear 1,4-polybutadiene on a silicon wafer in a parallel plate shear cell and tracer particle velocimetry. Tridisperse mixtures of fixed weight-average molecular weight Mw and varying number-average molecular weight Mn were prepared from nearly monodisperse polybutadienes. Their steady state slip behavior was examined at shear rates over the range of ∼0.1-15 s-1. The results show that the slip behavior in the transition regime depends on Mn at constant Mw. This study also revealed that weakly entangled and unentangled chains in the mixtures influence wall slip differently: mixtures containing moderate amounts of weakly entangled chains exhibited enhanced slip while those containing unentangled chains did not. We explain this observation using the tube theory through the slip disentanglement mechanism proposed by Brochard and de Gennes in 1992 and conclude that the slip behavior is changed because of the force balance between the mobile and adsorbed chains and the reduced entanglement density and coil stiffness related to the incorporation of short chains of different lengths. © 2014 American Chemical Society.

Date Published

Journal

Macromolecules

Volume

47

Issue

22

Number of Pages

8033-8040,

URL

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84913554364&doi=10.1021%2fma501320d&partnerID=40&md5=2366f74c50b487fff385149f0ba29ead

DOI

10.1021/ma501320d

Group (Lab)

Itai Cohen Group

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