Chemistry Commons^™

Functional Bottlebrush Polymer Additives For Thin Films And Coatings, Travis S. Laws

Doctoral Dissertations

Bottlebrush polymers are a class of highly branched polymers consisting of polymeric side chains that are densely grafted to a linear backbone. Their highly branched architecture results in surface enrichment across a broad range of materials. The goal of my research has been centered around the design of functional bottlebrush polymers and their use as surface active additives in blend films and coatings.

In the first chapter, we examine the segregation behavior of polystyrene bottlebrushes that are blended with linear polystyrene. We systematically vary the lengths of the bottlebrush backbone (Nb), side-chain (Nsc), and the linear matrix (Nm) in order …

Stretching The Applications Of Biomass: Development Of Lignin Based Thermoplastic Elastomers And Composite Materials, Anthony Stephen Bova

Doctoral Dissertations

Bio-based plastics and composites have seen increased industry adoption in recent years due to growing demand for materials with a low carbon footprint. The use of lignin as a feedstock for polymers has seen growing interest as the concept of an integrated cellulosic biorefinery gains traction and advances the need to use all components of separated biomass for value-added applications. Historically, use of lignin in thermoplastic and elastomeric copolymers and blends has been bottlenecked by the inability to introduce lignin content above 30 weight percent due to difficulties with interfacial adhesion of lignin with other soft segments. Efforts to overcome …

Effect Of Crosslinking On Carbon Nanotube Materials Through Chemical Treatment And Irradiation, Xinyi Lu

Doctoral Dissertations

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) exhibit a variety of exceptional properties, especially their ultrahigh tensile strength on the order of 100GPa show promise for constituting the next-generation carbon fiber. However, challenges remain to translate these properties into useful technology, primarily due to the sliding of the tubes past one another under tensile loading. The work presented in this dissertation is focused on enhancing the interaction between the CNTs and their bundles in a macro-assembly, in order to improve the tensile properties of the material.

Applying inter-tube crosslinks has been predicted to significantly enhance the stress transfer between the CNT components. We developed …

Tunable Photonic Multilayers From Stimulus-Responsive, Photo-Crosslinkable Polymers, Maria C. Chiappelli

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation describes the synthesis of photo-crosslinkable copolymers and their utilization for the fabrication and testing of tunable and responsive one-dimensional (1D) photonic multilayers. Photonic multilayers exhibit structural color due to the interference of incident light at layer interfaces, providing a convenient route towards optically responsive materials that do not rely on potentially light- or oxygen-sensitive chromophore-containing pigments and dyes. A fabrication technique based on sequential spin-coating and crosslinking of photo-crosslinkable polymers is used to assemble tunable and responsive photonic multilayers. Chapter One introduces the fundamental underlying principles of 1D photonic structures and explores their importance in a variety of …