Polymer and Organic Materials Commons^™

Copolymer Microphase Separation, Properties, And Applications, Daniel Weller

Dissertations

Copolymers represent a broad, but critically important class of materials. Often having properties superior to either of its constituents, copolymers are used in virtually all industries including automotive, aerospace, coatings, packaging, and cosmetics. Certain copolymers microphase separate to form nanosized domains that improve the physical properties of the copolymer. The polymer community already has a thorough understanding of how phase separation occurs, but the commercialization of phase separating copolymers lags significantly behind academia. Many of the copolymers that exist that have been undercharacterized and underutilized. This dissertation examines two such polymers. The first, a hard polystyrene material with soft nanodomains. …

Receptor-Doped Organic Transistors: Transducing Anion Binding From Mixed Ionic-Electronic Transport, Anthony Benasco

Dissertations

Organic semiconductors based on π-conjugated polymers show remarkable properties such as high tolerance to structural defects, low processing temperature requirements, biocompatibility, ease of fabrication, and tunable properties. Conjugated polymers integrated into device arrays can exhibit collective properties sensitive to minor perturbations in the surrounding media. However, these devices rely on serendipitous sensitivity to the analyte of interest, and strategies for specific detection remain a considerable change. There remains a compelling, global need for technologies to monitor phosphate due to its prevalence in agricultural runoff, leading to fish kills and economic decline for commercial and recreational fisheries. The strong hydration energies …

Thermomechanics Of Semiconducting Polymers And Their Morphological Phenomena, Luke Galuska

Dissertations

In contrast to conventional silicon-based electronics, semiconducting polymers show great promise for emerging applications in soft, flexible, and ductile electronic technologies. This is due to their polymeric nature, tailorable structure, and sub-100 nm device thickness. Despite this mechanical novelty, there remains a poor understanding of their structure-property-processing relationships, which has hindered growth within the field. This dissertation elucidates these relationships through investigation of their thermomechanics, and morphological phenomena. This was accomplished through the following projects:

1) To demonstrate the impact of backbone rigidity on semiconducting polymer thermomechanics, we varied the backbone rigidity of an NDI-based polymer by inserting flexible methylene …