Glass transition in polymers

DS Cohen, AB White Jr. Sharp fronts due to diffusion and stress at the glass transition in polymers. J Polym Sci Part B 27 1731-1745, 1989. 

This chapter has the title Determining the Glass Transition in Polymer Melts, but we might ask Which glass transition Do we consider... 

Science, K. Binder Ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, pp. 307-355. Monte Carlo Simulations of the Glass Transition in Polymers. 

Dynamics Simulations of the Thermal Glass Transition in Polymer Melts a-Relaxation Behavior. 

Simulation of the Glass Transition in Polymer Melts Extended Mode-Coupling Analysis. 

In Chapter 1, Professor Wolfgang Paul initiates a theme that is prevalent throughout the first half of this book extrapolating from atomic-level phenomena to macroscopic chemical and physical properties. Professor Paul begins his chapter on the use of simulations to study the glass transition in polymer melts by describing exactly what a glass transition is from both an... 

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. 

As noted in the introduction, the first successful studies of PCS near the glass transition in polymers employed thermally polymerized styrene. The monomer was dried over calcium hydride and vacuum distilled directly into the scattering cell. This procedure was also successfully employed to prepare poly(methyl methacrylate)(PMMA)28) and poly-(ethyl methacrylate)(PEMA)29). Although our own samples were all prepared without... 

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