On the size effect of additives in amorphous shape memory polymers
- Small additive molecules often enhance structural relaxation in polymers. We explore this effect in a thermoplastic shape memory polymer via molecular dynamics simulations. The additive-to-monomer size ratio is shown to play a key role here. While the effect of additive-concentration on the rate of shape recovery is found to be monotonic in the investigated range, a non-monotonic dependence on the size-ratio emerges at temperatures close to the glass transition. This work thus identifies the additives' size to be a qualitatively novel parameter for controlling the recovery process in polymer-based shape memory materials.
| Author: | Elias Mahmoudinezhad ZirdehiORCiDGND, Hakan DumluGND, Gunther EggelerORCiDGND, Fathollah VarnikORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:294-80041 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14020327 |
| Parent Title (English): | Materials |
| Publisher: | MDPI |
| Place of publication: | Basel |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of Publication (online): | 2021/04/14 |
| Date of first Publication: | 2021/01/10 |
| Publishing Institution: | Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsbibliothek |
| Tag: | molecular dynamics simulations; shape memory polymers; size effect of additives |
| Volume: | 14 |
| Issue: | 2, Article 327 |
| First Page: | 327-1 |
| Last Page: | 327-15 |
| Institutes/Facilities: | Materials Research Department |
| Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Materials Simulation (ICAMS), Department of scalebridging thermodynamic and kinetic simulation (STKS) | |
| open_access (DINI-Set): | open_access |
| Licence (English): |  Creative Commons - CC BY 4.0 - Attribution 4.0 International |
