Polymers with an Arbitrary Distribution of Characteristic Length Scales

2 Polymers with an Arbitrary Distribution of Characteristic Length Scales 

Generally, chemical reactions do not follow the mean-field kinetics, and as a 

1) In the case of polymerization-induced phase separation, due to the positive feedback arising from the Tromsdorff effects, it was found that the phase separation induced by polymerization also becomes autocatalytic. The phase separation proceeds with a maximum rate in the vicinity of the irradiation time at which the rate of polymerization reaches its maximum. As a consequence, a local strain field is generated and develops as the reaction continues. For small-molecule systems, this reaction-induced strain quickly relaxes and its effects on the subsequent reaction and phase separation are not significant. For polymeric systems, this reaction-induced strain is not negligible and therefore affects the concentration fluctuations as a long-range interaction. 

2) By using Mach-Zehnder interferometry, the development and relaxation of this reaction-induced strain field were detected and analyzed during and after the irradiation process. From these experimental results, we were able to correlate the resulting morphologies with the reaction-induced strain. 

3) From the materials viewpoint, phase separation under stationary, nonequilibrium conditions may be used to design functional polymer materials having 

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Designing Polymers with an Arbitrary Distribution of Characteristic Length Scales by the Computer-Assisted Irradiation (CAI) Method... 

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