Viscoelastic properties of ultrathin polycarbonate films by liquid dewetting

A liquid dewetting method for the determination of the viscoelastic properties of ultrathin polymer films has been extended to study thickness effects on the properties of ultrathin polycarbonate (PC) films. PC films with film thicknesses ranging from 4 to 299 nm were placed on glycerol at temperatures from below the macroscopic glass transition temperature (T_g) to above it with the dewetting responses being monitored. It is found that the isothermal creep results for films of the same thickness, but dewetted at different temperatures can be superposed into one master curve, which is consistent with the fact of PC being a thermorheologically simple material. Furthermore, the results show that the T_g of PC thin films is thickness dependent, but the dependence is weaker than the results for freely standing films and similar to literature data for PC films supported on rigid substrates. It was also found that the rubbery plateau region for the PC films stiffens dramatically, but still less than what has been observed for freely standing polycarbonate films. The rubbery stiffening is discussed in terms of a recently reported model that relates macroscopic segmental dynamics with the stiffening. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2015 , 53, 1559–1566     

Vertex-disjoint rainbow triangles in edge-colored graphs

Let $G$ be an edge-colored graph of order $n$. The minimum color degree of $G$, denoted by ${\delta }^c\left(G\right)$, is the largest integer $k$ such that for every vertex $v$, there are at least $k$ distinct colors on edges incident to $v$. We say that an edge-colored graph is rainbow if all its edges have different colors. In this paper, we consider vertex-disjoint rainbow triangles in edge-colored graphs. Li (2013) showed that if ${\delta }^c\left(G\right)\ge (n+1)∕2$, then $G$ contains a rainbow triangle and the lower bound is tight. Motivated by this result, we prove that if $n\ge 20$ and ${\delta }^c\left(G\right)\ge (n+2)∕2$, then $G$ contains two vertex-disjoint rainbow triangles. In particular, we conjecture that if ${\delta }^c\left(G\right)\ge (n+k)∕2$, then $G$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint rainbow triangles. For any integer $k\ge 2$, we show that if $n\ge 16k-12$ and ${\delta }^c\left(G\right)\ge n∕2+k-1$, then $G$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint rainbow triangles. Moreover, we provide sufficient conditions for the existence of $k$ edge-disjoint rainbow triangles.     

Small activation entropy bestows high-stability of nanoconfined D-mannitol

It has been a long-standing puzzling problem that some glasses exhibit higher glass transition temperatures(denoting high stability) but lower activation energy for relaxations(denoting low stability). In this paper, the relaxation kinetics of the nanoconfined D-mannitol(DM) glass was studied systematically using a high-precision and high-rate nanocalorimeter.The nanoconfined DM exhibits enhanced thermal stability compared to the free DM. For example, the critical cooling rate for glass formation decreases from 200 K/s to below 1 K/s; the Tg increases by about 20 K–50 K. The relaxation kinetics is analyzed based on the absolute reaction rate theory. It is found that, even though the activation energy E~*decreases,the activation entropy S~*decreases much more for the nanoconfined glass that yields a large activation free energy G~*and higher thermal stability. These results suggest that the activation entropy may provide new insights in understanding the abnormal kinetics of nanoconfined glassy systems.     

Scaling properties of fracture surfaces on glass strengthened by ionic exchange

In this work the results of the statistical topometric analysis of fracture surfaces of soda-lime-silica glass with and without ionic exchange treatment are reported. In this case, the mechanism of substitution is K⁺-Na⁺. atomic force microscopy (AFM) was employed to record the topometric data from the fracture surface. The roughness exponent (ζ) and the correlation length (ξ) were calculated by the variable bandwidth method. The analysis for both glasses (subjected and non-subjected to ionic exchange) for ζ shows a value ∼0.8, this value agrees well with that reported in the literature for rapid crack propagation in a variety of materials. The correlation length shows different values for each condition. These results, along with those of microhardness indentations suggest that the self-affine correlation length is influenced by the complex interactions of the stress field of microcracks with that resulting from the collective behavior of the point defects introduced by the strengthening mechanism of ionic exchange.     

Replica Symmetry Breaking in an Axial Model of Quadrupolar Glass

We investigate the replica symmetry breaking (RSB) in a neighborhood of the instability point of the replica-symmetric solution in the axial quadrupolar glass model. We show that the solution with the first-stage RSB is stable against the subsequent RSB. Although there is no reflection symmetry, the first-stage RSB solution continuously bifurcates from the replica-symmetric one. This implies that our model does not belong to either of the two classes into which spin glasses are usually divided.     

Investigations of Solid State Dynamics at the NRSSR Beamline at PETRA II. An Overview

The present status of the new nuclear resonance beamline PETRA 1 at HASYLAB, DESY, Hamburg is described. Besides an overview of the experimental setup some examples of recent experiments are given. Those cover the main applications, i.e., inelastic scattering from iron alloys and quasielastic scattering from glass-forming liquids. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Using multi-exposure of color fringes to measure the beating motion of a moth

A multi-exposure of color fringes method has been developed to improve the capture speed of a conventional color CCD camera. In the method, four groups of projected fringe patterns encoded with different colors and different directions are stored in one CCD frame. Therefore the capture frequency of the conventional CCD can be improved to 200 Hz. It is available to measure the insect wings with low beating frequency, such as dragonfly, moth, or butterfly, whose beating frequency is about 30–40 Hz. We have used the method to measure the beating motion of a moth successfully.     

Thermal analysis of glasses for proecological applications

Thermal behaviour and biochemical activity of potassium-silicate-phosphate glasses modified by addition of Ca, Mg, acting as ecological fertilisers of controlled release rate of the nutrients for plants were studied. It has been found that the biochemical activity of silicate-phosphate glasses depends on the nature and the number of components forming the glassy framework and is related to the thermal stability of glass demonstrated by the formation of new compounds during the process of crystallisation. It is proved that these seemingly different properties are determined by the same parameters which are the strengths bonds of glass network-formers and modifiers as well as their chemical affinity. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Synthesis and refractive‐index control of fluoropolymers by the polyaddition of bis(epoxide)s and triazine di(aryl ether)s

The polyaddition of fluorine‐containing bis(epoxide)s and fluorine‐containing triazine di(aryl ether)s were examined to give the corresponding fluorine‐containing poly(cyanurate)s. It was observed that the synthesized fluoropolymers had good thermal stabilities and good film‐forming properties. The glass transition temperatures (T_g's) and refractive‐indices (n_D's) of synthesized polymers were determined by differential scanning calorimetry and ellipsometry, respectively, and it was found that the values of T_g's and n_D's were supported by their fluorine containing ratios and skeletons. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 45: 4421–4429, 2007