Probing the dynamics of high-viscosity entangled polymers under shear using Neutron Spin Echo spectroscopy

Neutron Spin Echo spectroscopy provides unique insight into molecular and submolecular dynamics as well as intraand inter-molecular interactions in soft matter. These dynamics may change drastically under shear flow. In particular in polymer physics a stress plateau is observed, which might be explained by an entanglement-disentanglement transition. However, such a transition is difficult to identify directly by experiments. Neutron Spin Echo has been proven to provide information about entanglement length and degree by probing the local dynamics of the polymer chains. Combining shear experiments and neutron spin echo is challenging since, first the beam polarisation has to be preserved during scattering and second, Doppler scattered neutrons may cause inelastic scattering. In this paper we present a new shear device adapted for these needs. We demonstrate that a high beam polarisation can be preserved and present first data on an entangled polymer solution under shear. To complement the experiments on the dynamics we present novel SANS data revealing shearinduced conformational changes in highly entangled polymers.