Phys.org June 19, 2024 By swelling with solvent, glassy polymers can become gels that are soft and weak yet have enhanced extensibility. The marked changes in properties arise from the solvent increasing free volume between chains while weakening polymer–polymer interactions. A team of researchers in the US (North Carolina State University, University of Nebraska) developed a unique class of materials called glassy gels with desirable properties of both glasses and gels by solvating polar polymers with ionic liquids at appropriate concentrations. The ionic liquid increases free volume and extensibility despite the absence of conventional solvent. It forms strong and abundant […]
Tag Archives: Liquid glass
Through the thin-film glass, researchers spot a new liquid phase
Phys.org July 27, 2021 The structure of a glass closely resembles the liquid phase, but its properties are like solids, akin to a crystal. In vapor deposition, a material is changed from a gas into a solid directly. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used vapor deposition to create very dense thin-film glasses, corresponding to the packing of the new liquid phase, with a density much higher than was predicted to be possible without applying immense amounts of pressure. Thin films of these glasses can have density values even higher than crystal. Detailed structural information analysis of how individual molecules […]
Neither liquid nor solid
Science Daily January 5, 2021 Most experiments involving colloidal suspensions have relied on spherical colloids. Using polymer chemistry researchers in Germany manufactured small plastic particles, stretching, and cooling them until they achieved their ellipsoid forms and then placed them in a suitable solvent. They found that due to their distinct shapes their particles had orientation which gave rise to entirely new and previously unstudied kinds of complex behaviours. By changing particle concentrations in the suspensions, and tracking both the translational and rotational motion of the particles using confocal microscopy, they observed two competing glass transitions — a regular phase transformation […]