Macromolecular Diffusion in a Crowded Polymer Nanocomposite

作者：Gam Sangah; Meth Jeffrey S; Zane Steve G; Chi Changzai; Wood Barbara A; Seitz Michelle E; Winey Karen I; Clarke Nigel; Composto Russell J^*

来源：Macromolecules, 2011, 44(9): 3494-3501.

DOI：10.1021/ma102463q

Macromolecular motion is reduced in crowded polymer nanocomposites. Tracer diffusion is measured for deuterated polystyrene (dPS) into a polystyrene (PS):silica nanoparticle (NP) matrix using elastic recoil detection. This nanocomposite is ideal for studying diffusion in a crowded system because the interparticle distance (ID) that defines confinement can be varied from much greater than to much less than the size of the dPS chain, which is described by 2R(g), the radius of gyration, and varies from 10 to 40 nm in this study. Diffusion is observed to be significantly slower than that predicted by the Maxwell model. The tracer diffusion coefficient of dPS in the nanocomposite relative to the pure PS matrix (D/D(0)) plotted against the NP separation relative to probe size (i.e., ID/2R(g)) falls on a master curve, indicating that crowding is a property of both the dPS size and confinement in the nanocomposite. Moreover, the normalized diffusion coefficient decreases more rapidly when ID/2R(g) is less than similar to 1, suggesting strong confinement conditions. The scaling of the diffusion coefficient with chain length is in excellent agreement with the entropic barrier model that accounts for the slowing down associated with the loss of chain entropy due to constrictive bottlenecks.

• 出版日期2011-5-10