Modeling polymer melt‐flow instabilities

Electrohydrodynamic Instabilities in Thin Polymer Films

Aspects of Electrohydrodynamic Instabilities at Polymer Interfaces

Electrospinning is emerging as a simple means of producing fibers with diameters ranging from 0.02 μm to many microns. Electrospinning, however, relies on the force generated by an electric field on the surface of a polymer solution to either enhance instabilities in a thinning jet or to rapidly elongate a jet of polymer solution form a nozzle. In this article, the fundamental physics and fluid...

Elastic instabilities in planar elongational flow of monodisperse polymer solutions

We investigate purely elastic flow instabilities in the almost ideal planar stagnation point elongational flow field generated by a microfluidic optimized-shape cross-slot extensional rheometer (OSCER). We use time-resolved flow velocimetry and full-field birefringence microscopy to study the behavior of a series of well-characterized viscoelastic polymer solutions under conditions of low fluid...

Nano-Scale Topographic Control of Polymer Surfaces via Buckling Instabilities

We have used a plasma-mediated cross-linking process to generate the patterns on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) thin film surfaces. Exposure to an argon plasma leads to the formation of a siloxane network in the near-surface region. The silica-like surface layer is put into compressive stress when the sample cools after removing it from the plasma chamber due to differential thermal contraction, l...

Instabilities in the Fabrication of Polymer Optical Fibers

Polymer optical fibers (POFs) have drawn interest as high-bandwidth (or high-speed) data-transmission media for short distance communications as in local area networks or home networks. In spite of their higher attenuation (or loss of optical power) than glass optical fibers (GOFs), POFs are perceived to be more suitable for these applications due to their flexibility and durability. These prop...