Engineering Commons^™

Improved Data Acquisition Using A Novel Dynamic Mechanical Analysis Sample Preparation Technique: The Numbers Do Not Lie, Jordan J. Winetrout

Honors Theses

Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) is a technique commonly used to identify the thermomechanical properties of polymeric materials. In the aerospace industry, a typical DMA sample is a glassy epoxy-amine polymer network. On a laboratory scale, these types of materials are cured in a silicon mold and sanded by hand to yield a sample with testable dimensions. This preparation technique is time consuming and causes sample imperfections which negatively affects data acquisition. This thesis aims to absolve the issues with DMA sample preparation by using a custom vacuum housing and a DeWALT^TM brand orbital sander. This novel approach has been …

Design Process Of A Novel Dynamic Mechanical Analysis Sample Preparation Methodology, Julian M. Richardson

Honors Theses

The technique of dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) has been a frontrunner in the field of polymer science for decades. It’s used as a tool for characterization has been integral in mankind’s understanding of the properties of polymeric materials. The procedure for obtaining data using DMA is widespread and standardized, however the procedure for preparing the samples is a list of dimensions and tolerances with no mention of how to obtain said dimensions. Every research group using DMA is left to their own devices to prepare samples. This discontinuity can create the problem of nonuniform results across the scientific community. This …

“Polysoaps” Via Raft Copolymerization To Form Well-Defined Micelles For Water Remediation And Targeted Drug Delivery Applications, Phillip Pickett

Dissertations

Amphiphilic copolymers have become increasingly important for environmental and biological applications due to their behavioral characteristics in aqueous solution. For example, structurally-tailored statistical amphiphilic copolymers or “polysoaps” can self-assemble into micelles or other architectures in water at various concentrations. Polysoaps may be differentiated from small molecule surfactant micelles in their capability to self-assemble into unimolecular associates (unimolecular micelles) with no dependence on concentration. Such micelles offer enormous potential for dispersion of hydrophobic species in water at high dilution. Importantly, each polymer chain forms its own micelle and upon dilution, these micelles remain intact and capable of dispersing hydrocarbon material in …

Engineering Multifunctional And Morphologically Diverse Polymer Brush Surfaces, Cassandra M. Reese

Dissertations

The combination of surface-initiated polymerization (SIP) and post-polymerization (PPM) serves as a powerful approach to fabricate complex, multifunctional polymer films, which can be precisely tuned for desired surface engineering applications. Careful manipulation of PPM parameters such as reaction conditions, the tethered brush parameters, and the physical properties of the unbound post-modifier greatly influence the depth of penetration of the post-modifier and the polymer brush compositional heterogeneity. This dissertation focuses on engineering polymer brush surfaces with multifunctional chemistries and tunable morphologies by investigating the PPM parameters that dictate the distribution of post-modifiers on grafted polymer brush surfaces.

The first chapter of …