Amorphous Cycloolefin Polymers

Temperature memory effect in amorphous shape memory polymers.

Temperature memory effect (TME) refers to the ability of shape memory polymers (SMPs) to memorize the temperature at which pre-deformation was conducted. In the past few years, this TME was experimentally demonstrated by comparing the applied programming temperature (Td) with a characteristic recovery temperature (Tc), which corresponds to either the maximum recovery stress or free recovery spe...

High thermal conductivity in electrostatically engineered amorphous polymers

High thermal conductivity is critical for many applications of polymers (for example, packaging of light-emitting diodes), in which heat must be dissipated efficiently to maintain the functionality and reliability of a system. Whereas uniaxially extended chain morphology has been shown to significantly enhance thermal conductivity in individual polymer chains and fibers, bulk polymers with coil...

Molecularly-based numerical evaluation of free volume in amorphous polymers

A study of the microstructure of polymers is essential for the understanding of their anomalous diffusion properties. The concept of free volume may be utilized to study relaxation phenomena and diffusion processes in polymers. Since a quantitative definition of free volume is not possible, a new concept called available volume is introduced. A simple geometric definition of available volume, r...

Modeling the viscoelastoplastic behavior of amorphous glassy polymers

Constitutive equations are derived for the viscoelastoplastic response of amorphous glassy polymers at isothermal loading with small strains. A polymer is treated as an ensemble of cooperatively relaxing regions (CRR) which rearrange at random times as they are thermally agitated. Rearrangement of CRRs reflects the viscoelastic response of the bulk medium. At low stresses, CRRs are connected wi...

Diffusion of Small Molecules in Amorphous Glassy Polymers