Silicone (polydimethylsiloxanes, or PDMS) fluids are widely used in industrial and consumer products, and may find their way into municipal biosolids that are eventually applied to the land. In soil PDMS breaks down into dimethylsilanediol which is then either volatilized or biodegraded. Since biosolids are often composted prior to land application, this paper investigates fate and effects of P...

This article presents a molecular dynamics (MD)-aided multiscale modeling framework that accounts for the nanoscale deformation kinetics and morphological irregularities in polymer with randomly-dispersed carbon nanotubes (CNTs). First, novel coarse-grain MD approach is developed to generate large-size simulation domains comprising realistic aspect ratio CNTs crosslinked network of bulk thermos...

The effect of a series of sodium salts on the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), PNIPAM, was investigated as a function of molecular weight and polymer concentration with a temperature gradient microfluidic device under a dark-field microscope. In solutions containing sufficient concentrations of kosmotropic anions, the phase transition of PNIPAM was reso...

poly(vinyl acetate) is synthesized via solution polymerization, and then it is converted to poly(vinyl alcohol) by alkaline alcoholysis. the aim of the work study was to investigate statistically the  influence of reaction variables in vinyl acetate polymerization, the conversion of this monomer to polymer, degree of branching of acetyl group in poly(vinyl acetate), as well as the molecular wei...