Glass transition data study

Thermal Properties. Spider dragline silk was thermally stable to about 230°C based on thermal gravimetric analysis (tga) (33). Two thermal transitions were observed by dynamic mechanical analysis (dma), one at —75° C, presumed to represent localized mobiUty in the noncrystalline regions of the silk fiber, and the other at 210°C, indicative of a partial melt or a glass transition. Data from thermal studies on B. mori silkworm cocoon silk indicate a glass-transition temperature, T, of 175°C and stability to around 250°C (37). The T for wild silkworm cocoon silks were slightly higher, from 160 to 210°C. 

The relationship between Tg and microbial stability is the least studied of all the stability areas. Based mainly on mold germination data, Slade and Levine (1991) postulated that glass transition parameters, specifically Tm/Ts ratio, T g and W g (related to C defined previously in Figure 32), could be useful for predicting the microbial stability of concentrated and... 

Glass transition temperatures (Tg s) were detemined using a Dupont DSC 910 attached to a 9900 data analysis system. For off-stoichiometric studies, epoxy resin and diamine were cured in situ within a hermetically sealed DSC pan (sample tak from 25 C - 300 C at lO C/min), then cooled rapidly back to 25 C, and finally scanned from 40 C - 220 c to record the Tg. All samples were scanned under nitrogen atmosphere at a rate of 10 C/min. 

The use of photon correlation spectroscopy to study the dynamics of concentration fluctuations in polymer solutions and gels is now well established. In bulk polymers near the glass transition there will be slowly relaxing fluctuations in density and optical anisotropy which can also be studied by this technique. In this article we review the development of the field of photon correlation spectroscopy from bulk polymers. The theory of dynamic light scattering from pure liquids is presented and applied to polymers. The important experimented considerations involved in the collection and analysis of this type of data are discussed. Most of the article focuses on the dynamics of fluctuations near the glass transition in polymers. All the published work in this area is reviewed and the results are critically discussed. The current state of the field is summarized and many suggestions for further work are presented. 

The actual relaxation functions observed near the glass transition are highly nonexponential. The earliest studies naively analyzed very limited data in terms of single exponential decays or two discrete exponentials. 

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