The thermomechanical and dynamic mechanical properties of films and fibres in vapour laden atmospheres and simulated dye baths were investigated in order to understand their processing behaviour. Acetone and water vapour acted as plasticisers for cellulose acetate film. 2-phenoxyethanol was found to penetrate poly(ethylene terephthalate) film above its glass transition temperature and consequen...

Many of water's peculiar physical properties are still not well understood, and one of the most important unresolved questions is its glass transition related dynamics. The consensus has been to accept a glass transition temperature (T(g)) around 136 K, but this value has been questioned and reassigned to about 165 K. We find evidence that the dielectric relaxation process of confined water tha...

Recent work on the zero temperature phases and phase transitions of strongly random electronic system is reviewed. The transition between the spin glass and quantum paramagnet is examined, for both metallic and insulating systems. Insight gained from the solution of infinite range models leads to a quantum field theory for the transition between a metallic quantum paramagnetic and a metallic sp...

The influence of both electron beam irradiation and step-crosslinking process on the high abrasion furnace (HAF) carbon black loaded natural rubber (NR) vulcanizates are reported. With irradiation, a higher crosslinking density, ν, thermal conductivity, λ, glass transition temperature, Tg, and decreased specific heat capacity, Cp, have been observed for the irradiated materials as compared with...

We report a thermosensitive microgel suspension that can be tuned reversibly between the glass state at low temperature and the liquid state at high temperature. Unlike hard spheres, we find that the glass transition for these suspensions is governed by both the volume fraction and the softness of the particles, where softer suspensions form a glass at higher effective volume fractions. In the ...

High-temperature high-vacuum electrostatic levitation ~HTHVESL! and differential scanning calorimetry ~DSC! were combined to determine the hemispherical total emissivity eT , and the specific heat capacity cp , of the undercooled liquid and throughout the glass transition of the Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10.0Be22.5 bulk metallic glass forming alloy. The ratio of cp /eT as a function of undercooling w...

We propose a simple dynamical model of the glass transition based on the results from a non-randomly frustrated spin model which is known to form a glassy state below a characteristic quench temperature. The model is characterized by a multi-valleyed free-energy surface which is modulated by an overall curvature. The transition associated with the vanishing of this overall curvature is reminisc...

Pentaphenyl trimethyl trisiloxane is an isotropic liquid at room temperature with a dynamic glass transition at 224 K. Using x-ray reflectivity, we see surface density oscillations (layers) develop below 285 K, similar to those seen in other metallic and dielectric liquids and in computer simulations. The layering threshold is approximately 0.23 times the liquid-gas critical temperature. Upon c...

We report idealized mode-coupling theory results for the glass transition of ensembles of model fullerenes interacting via phenomenological two-body potentials. Transition lines are found for C60, C70, and C96 in the temperature-density plane. We argue that the observed glass transition behavior is indicative of kinetic arrest that is strongly driven by the interparticle attraction in addition ...