Hemicelluloses dissolved in the pre-hydrolysis liquor (PHL) of kraftbased dissolving pulping processes can potentially be used to produce high value-added products such as fuel ethanol and xylitol. However, the isolation of lignin in PHL is a problem that remains unsolved and obstructs the utilization of those parts of hemicelluloses. Based on the principle of lignin isolation by acidification,...

Electrospinning is an effective processing method for preparing nanofibers decorated with functional groups. Nanofibers decorated with functional groups may be utilized to study material-biomarker interactions i.e. act as biosensors with potential as single molecule detectors. We have developed an effective approach for preparing functional polymers where the functionality has the capacity of s...

A polystyrene-b-poly(ethylene oxide) (PS-b-PEO) (MW = 141k, 11.4 wt% PEO) diblock copolymer in the hydrophobic regime was spread from chloroform solutions of various concentrations at the air-water interface, and the resultant monolayers were transferred to glass substrates and imaged using atomic force microscopy. Monolayers prepared under identical conditions were also characterized at the ai...

Thermoplastic poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) (Mw(PEO) approximately 4000) has been used to prepare thermosetting nanocomposites incorporating diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) epoxy oligomer. Blends with various PEO/DGEBA weight ratios were cured using stoichiometric portions of 4,4'-diaminodiphenylmethane. The resulting semi-interpenetrating polymer networks were studied by several technique...

Solid polymer electrolytes, such as polyethylene oxide (PEO) based systems, have the potential to replace liquid electrolytes in secondary lithium batteries with flexible, safe, and mechanically robust designs. Previously reported PEO nanocomposite electrolytes routinely use metal oxide nanoparticles that are often 5-10 nm in diameter or larger. The mechanism of those oxide particle-based polym...

Poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO), soluble in both aqueous and organic solvents, is one of the most intriguing polymers. PEO solution properties have been extensively studied for decades; however, many of the studies have focused on specific properties, such as clustering, of PEO in aqueous solutions, and the behavior of PEO in organic solvents has not been adequately explored. The results presented h...

In this study we investigate the formation of protein-resistant polymer surfaces, such as aliphatic polyesters, through the deposition of self-assemblies of amphiphilic poly(l-lactide)-b-poly(ethylene oxide), PLLA-b-PEO, copolymers as stable nanoparticles with a kinetically frozen PLLA core on model PLLA surfaces. The length of the PEO chains in the corona was tuned to achieve polymer brushes c...

The oligo(ethylene oxide) modified layered double hydroxide (LDH) prepared by template method was added as a nanoscale nucleating agent into poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) to form PEO/OLDH nanocomposite electrolytes. The effects of OLDH addition on morphology and conductivities of nanocomposite electrolytes were studied using wide-angle X-ray diffractometer, polarized optical microscopy, differenti...

Lithium ions solvated by polyethylene-oxide ~PEO! have been confined by intercalation within the galleries of an insulating, inorganic layered solid CdPS3 . The dc conductivity of this confined polymer electrolyte Cd0.75PS3Li0.5(PEO) displays a distinct change in the mechanism of conduction with temperature, exhibiting a crossover from an Arrhenius temperature dependence at low temperatures to ...

We have studied the rheological behavior of concentrated cement suspensions in the absence and presence of comb polymers comprised of a polyacrylic acid (PAA) backbone and charge-neutral, poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) teeth. These species possessed a uniform backbone molecular weight and graft density, with varying teeth molecular weight. Both PAA, a linear polyelectrolyte, and PAA/PEO comb polyme...