Transient Cooperativity behind the Dynamics of Sheared Polymer Melts

Short Description

Polymer melts exhibit a rich dynamic behavior when exposed to intense shear fields. For example, amorphous polymers display a shear thinning behavior, while crystallizable polymers form correlated segments within the flow–oriented structures. However, the role of such correlations on the dynamic behavior of crystallizable polymer melts is largely unexplored. In a recent report [1], we have shown the presence of transient cooperative clusters of monomers (driven by the attractive interaction between the monomers of neighboring chains) behind the dynamics of sheared polymer melts (refer the figure below). This observation, apart from suggesting ways to tune the behavior of polymer melts, clearly highlighted the need for an extension of the concepts in polymer physics. In this project, systematic complementary experiments will be performed to increase the number of correlated clusters and hence to tune the non-equilibrium behavior of polymer melts.

Reference: 1. S. Chandran and G. Reiter, Transient cooperative process in dewetting polymer melts, Phys. Rev. Lett., 116 (8), 088301, (2016)