The tethering of ligands to nanoparticles has emerged as an important strategy to control interactions and organization in particle assembly structures. We demonstrate that ligand interactions in mixtures of polymer-tethered nanoparticles (which are modified with distinct types of polymer chains) can impart upper or lower critical solution temperature (UCST/LCST)-type phase behavior on binary p...

Charge generation and recombination processes occurring in ternary photoactive copolymer:copolymer:fullerene blends consisting of different mixing ratios between entirely amorphous and semi-crystalline PPE-PPV copolymers are investigated by transient absorption pump-probe and pump-push photocurrent spectroscopy. The experiments reveal that an excess of semi-crystalline polymer facilitates excit...

Phenomenological hydrodynamic equations are proposed for entangled polymer blends as generalization of those for polymer solutions. They can describe coupling between macroscopic flow and relative diffusion. The key concept we use is the "tube velocity" introduced by Brochard in the problem of mutual diffusion in polymer blends. As applications, (I) we give a general expression for the time-cor...

In some donor-acceptor blends based on conjugated polymers, a pronounced charge-transfer complex (CTC) forms in the electronic ground state. In contrast to small-molecule donor-acceptor blends, the CTC concentration in polymer:acceptor solution can increase with the acceptor content in a threshold-like way. This threshold-like behavior was earlier attributed to the neighbor effect (NE) in the p...

The kinetics of the isothermal crystallization process from the melt of pure poly(butylene succinate)-co-(butylene carbonate) (PBS-co-BC) and its blends with cellulose acetate butylate (CAB) (10–30 wt%) was studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and the well-known Avrami equation. In the blends, the overall crystallization rate of PBS-co-BC became slower with increasing CAB content....

Conjugated polymer-polyelectrolyte blends combine and couple electronic semiconductor functionality with selective ionic transport, making them attractive as the active material in organic biosensors and bioelectronics, electrochromic displays, neuromorphic computing, and energy conversion and storage. Although extensively studied and explored, fundamental knowledge and accurate quantitative mo...

Polymer blends are proving to be important in emerging technologies including as gas separation membranes [1]. The blending of existing polymers offers the distinct advantage of being able to develop new materials with potentially synergistic properties not attainable with the individual polymer components and without the need to synthesize new macromolecules [2]. We recently developed phasesep...

The design and construction of an apparatus for studying the simultaneous small angle neutron scattering (SANS) and steady shear viscosity behavior of polymer melts and concentrated solutions is discussed. Successful operation of the device is demonstrated on a blend of 20 weight percent deuterated polystyrene and 80 weight percent poly(vinylmethylether). The effects of shear on the critical be...

Due to the effects of microphase separation and physical dimensions, confinement widely exists in the multi-component polymer systems (e.g., polymer blends, copolymers) and the polymers having nanoscale dimensions, such as thin films and nanofibers. Semicrystalline polymers usually show different crystallization kinetics, crystalline structure and morphology from the bulk when they are confined...

Blends of aqueous dispersion of a hydrophobic and hydrophilic polymer, namely Surelease®: hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (Surelease®: HPMC E15) were used as coating materials to control the drug release from coated pellets of the highly water soluble drug metoprolol succinate. Varying the polymer blends, ranges of drug release patterns were obtained at pH 6.8. The present study dealt with diffus...