It is well accepted that adding nanoparticles (NPs) to polymer melts can result in significant property improvements. Here we focus on the causes of mechanical reinforcement and present rheological measurements on favourably interacting mixtures of spherical silica NPs and poly(2-vinylpyridine), complemented by several dynamic and structural probes. While the system dynamics are polymer-like wi...

Stimuli-sensitive hydrogels changing their volumes and shapes in response to various stimulations have potential applications in multiple fields. However, these hydrogels have not yet been commercialized due to some problems that need to be overcome. One of the most significant problems is that conventional stimuli-sensitive hydrogels are usually brittle. Here we prepare extremely stretchable t...

Cotton fabric was grafted with a poly (acrylamide-co-itaconic acid) co-polymer via ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN) induced graft co-polymerization in an aqueous medium. The grafted cotton fabric was loaded with Ag nanoparticles by entrapment of Ag+ ions into a grafted polymer network, followed by borohydride reduction. The resulting Ag nanoparticle-loaded grafted fabric was characterized by Fourie...

Structural properties and phase behavior of crosslinked networks embedded in polymer solutions are theoretically investigated. The partial structure factor of the network is calculated using a matrix formulation of the random phase approximation and the forward scattering limit is correlated with the phase behavior. Swelling and deswelling processes are analyzed in terms of the polymer concentr...

Mesh size distributions (MSDs) of swollen cross-linked styrene copolymer networks have been measured by thermoporometry using CCl(4) as a probe liquid. All numerical relationships required for the calculation of the MSD were established for both the liquid-to-solid and the solid-to-solid thermal transitions of CCl(4) and successfully validated on test samples. It was found that the polymer netw...

An acrylate polymer network was submitted to thermomechanical shape memory cycles. The set of experiments characterized the material stress-free strain recovery and the strain-constrained stress recovery in uniaxial tension. Experimental parameters like temperature of strain fixation, amount of strain and heating rate, were varied in order to provide a relatively complete set of experimental da...

A supramolecular network polymer consisting of a pair of immiscible polymers, poly(butyl)methacrylate (PBMA) and polystyrene (PS), is described. A urea of guanosine (1, UG) and 2,7-diamido-1,8-naphthyridine (2, DAN), which form an exceptionally strong quadruply hydrogen-bonding complex, are displayed at 1-10 mol % along the main backbone of PBMA and PS, respectively. (1)H NMR studies show heter...

Complex light-matter interactions in azobenzene polymers have limited our understanding of how photoisomerization induces deformation as a function of the underlying polymer network and form of the light excitation. A unified modeling framework is formulated to advance the understanding of surface deformation and bulk deformation of polymer films that are controlled by linear or circularly pola...

We study the magneto-elastic coupling behavior of paramagnetic chains in soft polymer gels exposed to external magnetic fields. To this end, a laser scanning confocal microscope is used to observe the morphology of the paramagnetic chains together with the deformation field of the surrounding gel network. The paramagnetic chains in soft polymer gels show rich morphological shape changes under o...

In a nematic gel we observe a low-energy buckling deformation arising from soft and semisoft elastic modes. We prepare the self-assembled gel by dissolving a coil-side-group liquid-crystalline polymer-coil copolymer in a nematic liquid crystal. The gel has long network strands and a precisely tailored structure, making it ideal for studying nematic rubber elasticity. Under polarized optical mic...