A Novel Route to Calculate the Length Scale for the Glass Transition in Polymers

Abstract

The occurrence of glass transition is believed to be associated to cooperative motion with a growing length scale with decreasing temperature. We provide a novel route to calculate the size of cooperatively rearranging regions CRR of glass-forming polymers combining the Adam-Gibbs theory of the glass transition with the self-concentration concept. To do so we explore the dynamics of glass-forming polymers in different environments. The material specific parameter $\alpha$ connecting the size of the CRR to the configurational entropy is obtained in this way. Thereby, the size of CRR can be precisely quantified in absolute values. This size results to be in the range 1 $÷$ 3 nm at the glass transition temperature depending on the glass-forming polymer.

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• A review on the progress of polymer nanostructures with modulated morphologies and properties, using nonporous AAO templates