QIAN ZHAO: CO2-mediated formation of polymer/clay nanocomposites (Under the direction of Edward T. Samulski) In this thesis, the feasibility of scCO2 as both a processing medium and a polymerization medium for preparation of polymer/clay nanocomposites has been explored, with the first part discussing a CO2-mediated intercalation of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) in clay. It has been shown that CO2...

Pyrimidine/purine/purine triplexes are known to inhibit DNA polymerization. Here we have studied the mechanisms of this inhibition by comparing the efficiency of Vent DNA polymerase on triplex- and duplex-containing templates at different temperatures, Mg2+concentrations and time intervals with the thermal stability of the corresponding structures. Our results show that triplexes can only be by...

Novel cyclic olefin polymers (COPs) derived from bulky cyclic olefins, tricyclodipentadiene (TCPD) and tricyclo[6.4.0.19,12]-tridec-10-ene (TTE), with high glass transition temperature (Tg), excellent thermal stability, and high transparency, have been synthesized by ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) and subsequent hydrogenation. ROMP of TCPD and TTE was carried out successfully wit...

Primary MgCl2.3.3EtOH adduct (PCT1) was prepared by melt quenching method and then submitted into a programmed thermal dealcoholation project using a fluidized bed reactor. During thermal dealcoholation program, different MgCl2.nEtOH support samples with n= 3.0, 2.7, 2.4, and 2.1 were selected and named as PCT2 to PCT5, respectively. Structural analysis of the support samples showed a significa...

Among the functionalities of magnetic Heusler alloys, magnetostriction is attracting considerable attention. The alloy Ni2MnGa has a premartensite phase, which is a precursor state to the martensitic transition. Some researchers have observed magnetostriction in this alloy in the premartensite phase. We performed magnetostriction studies on the premartensite phase of related Cr-substituted Ni2M...

We present a dynamic study of the normal state thermal nucleation of a 2 03BC-radius In granule, initially in an equilibrium metastable state in the presence of a magnetic field. The driving mechanism is the neutrino-indium collision which is assumed to provide a local energy deposition. An analytic expression for the quasiparticle and phonon temperatures Te ( r, t ) and Tp ( r, t ) characteriz...

The particle collection effi ciency of a prototype environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) sampler based on the use of thermophoresis is determined by optimizing the operational voltage that determines its thermal gradient. This sampler’s heating element was made of three sets of thermophoretic (TP) wires 25μm in diameter suspended across a channel cut in a printed circuit board and mounted with coll...

Step-growth radical copolymerization between a,u-diiodoperfluoroalkanes (A) and a,u-unconjugated dienes (B) proceeds efficiently through a photo-induced Step Transfer-Addition & Radical-Termination (START) strategy in aqueous/organic biphasic system. The addition of water in our polymerization strategy enhanced the overall polymerization efficiency and inhibited the function loss (C–I) signific...

We present a set of DNA supramolecular architectures based on the polymerization of discrete DNA tiles having the shape of parallelograms and designed to have a one-dimensional inter-tile connectivity. Tiles bind to each other with two connections, which have different thermal stabilities. We discuss how this difference in stability implies that the same monomeric tile can yield supramolecular ...

The objective of this paper is to present a dynamic Monte Carlo model that is able to simulate the polymerization of styrene with bifunctional free-radical initiators in a batch reactor. The model can predict the dynamic evolution of the chain length distribution of polystyrene in the reactor. The model includes all relevant polymerization mechanistic steps, including chemical and thermal radic...