We study the shear-flow effects on phase separation of entangled polymer blends by incorporating into the chemical potential a nonequilibrium contribution due to the flow. The results are compared with those of a previous analysis by other authors which did not modify the chemical potential but used a different assumption for the stress tensor of the blend.

We report the first synthesis of a fused germaindacenodithiophene monomer and its polymerisation with 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole by Suzuki polycondensation. The resulting polymer, PGeTPTBT, is semicrystalline, despite the presence of four bulky 2-ethylhexyl groups. Blends with P(70)CBM afford solar cells with efficiencies of 5.02%.

Polymer photovoltaic cells (PVC) are intensely investigated because of their potential advantages over Si-based PVCs. Their present drawbacks are low conversion efficiency, limited exciton diffusion length, poor hole carriers transport and short lifetime. The highest conversion efficiency achieved so far in spincoated polymer blends is close to 5%. Recently, efficiency growing has been demonstr...

High molecular weight PBTTT-C12 is blended with the pure trimer, BTTT-3, to enhance intergrain connectivity and charge transport. Analysis of the morphology and crystallinity of the blends shows that the polymer and oligomer are well-integrated, leading to high hole mobilities, greater than 0.1 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1), in films that contain as much as 83% oligomer.

Site-specific assembly of gold nanoparticles on a polysaccharide surface was accomplished via a straightforward method exploiting interfacial polymer blends, selective protein adsorption and electrostatic interaction. The method could be useful in further applications due to the universal nature of the utilized phenomena.

Albert van Breemen, Tomasz Zaba, Vsevolod Khikhlovskyi, Jasper Michels, Rene Janssen, Martijn Kemerink and Gerwin Gelinck, Surface Directed Phase Separation of Semiconductor Ferroelectric Polymer Blends and their Use in Non-Volatile Memories, 2015, Advanced Functional Materials, (25), 2, 278-286. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adfm.201401896 Copyright: Wiley-VCH Verlag http://www.wiley-vch.de/publis...

Three copolymers of N-vinylcarbazole and N-phenyl-2-(5’-vinyl-2’-thienyl)-5-(2”-thienyl)pyrrole were synthesized using different feed stock ratios identical to the mass blends and characterized. Blends of poly(N-vinylcarbazole) (PVK) and poly(N-phenyl-2-(2’-thienyl)-5(5’’-vinyl-2’’-thienyl)pyrrole) (PSNPhS) with similar compositions were prepared. Solidstate devices were fabricated, and the ele...

Polymer blending is a cost-effective way to control the properties of soft materials, but propensity for blends macrophase separate motivates development efficient compatibilization strategies. Across this broad area, particularly important polysiloxanes, which exhibit strong repulsive interactions with most organic polymers. This review analyzes state-of-the-art polysiloxane strategies silicon...

Synthetic polymers are very widely used today, with diverse applications in various industries such as food, automotive, and packaging. The quality of plastic products depends on the quality of the polymers or polymer blends used during manufacturing, so identity verification and quality testing of those materials during every stage of manufacturing is necessary to ensure that only high-quality...

The susceptibility related to composition fluctuations in polymer blends can be described by a crossover function derived by Belyakov et al. [2, 3] near and far from the critical temperature T~. This has quite recently been demonstrated by us using neutron and light scattering