Summary: Interactions between surfaces with attached polymers are very common in both biological and engineering fields. These types of interactions are critical in processes such as coagulation and flocculation in mineral processing, biological recognition in metabolic processes and stress transference in polymer composites, among others. Although many mechanisms have been proposed to explain phenomena occurring at the interfaces on a molecular level, few experimental procedures can give direct information about them. In this work, interactions occurring at interfaces containing attached polymer chains, such as the ones that are present in polymer composites, were studied by using AFM. In order to identify the effect of the structure of the interface on phenomena such as stress transference and energy dissipation, polymers with different molar mass, areal density and chemical architecture were synthesized and attached to substrates and AFM cantilevers. Force‐distance curves, obtained by AFM, provided some fundamental information about the mechanisms involved when polymers attached to different surfaces interact. Results showed that chains grafted on different surfaces can interact via entanglements and intersegmental bonding. Based upon the application of the AFM modified technique, interfaces containing polymers, such as in polymer composites, can be designed and optimized through the manipulation of its structure to achieve new roles in the performance of systems.
The present work addresses the validation process of an in-house developed image analysis tool to extract fringe length, tortuosity, and separation from high resolution transmission electron microscopy images of carbonaceous materials. In order to validate the algorithm, we compare fringe properties that are extracted from high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images through (1) the in-house developed tool (new algorithm) and (2) a tool that has been validated and published (previous algorithm). X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy are used to crosscheck the results for fringe length and fringe separation extracted from the HRTEM images. The algorithm of extracting fringe tortuosity is validated by the images of two disordered soot samples, and a heat-pretreated, highly-ordered sample. Tortuosity results are compared with the results of fringe separation. These comparisons validate the algorithm for extracting fringe tortuosity and confirm that tortuosity is an indicator of the degree of disorder within the carbon framework. Statistical results for each property extracted from the HRTEM images by the newly developed image analysis tool are presented in the form of a histogram and characteristic values (mean and median). The characteristic values quantitatively distinguish between the different carbon nanostructures of various soot samples. 相似文献
Water permeation in organic coatings can be monitored by measuring the capacitance change in coatings. A new method of measuring water content in organic coatings using a miniature fringe field capacitance (FFC) sensor is described in this paper. The FFC sensor comprises two planar interdigitated electrodes on a dielectric substrate which is connected to a measuring circuit. Coating capacitance is measured by measuring the sensor capacitance when it is in contact with the surface of the coating. Sensor capacitance is theoretically calculated based on IDC capacitor theory for various sensor geometrical parameters at different water ingression levels in the coating. The computed sensor capacitance is validated with experimental values of five miniature sensors which are fabricated by lithography. The calibrated FFC sensor is used to monitor the water permeation profile in the coating, and the results are compared with that of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy technique. The technique provides scope for developing a portable, hand-held, and noninvasive technique to measure water permeation in organic coatings in the field. 相似文献
Moisture damage has become one of serious distresses to reduce stability of pavement structure and service life. One of the most essential reasons for moisture damage is insufficient adhesion between asphalt and aggregate. Most conventional methods for evaluating adhesive characteristic are subjective and empirical and adhesion results are seriously affected by tester's operation habit and judgment. Meanwhile, active adhesion mechanism was not considered in most conventional methods. This study designed an active adhesion based test method, named active adhesion evaluation method (AAEM), to make up for the lack of research on active adhesion and eliminate the subjective operation in boiling process. Boiling water test was performed on basalt and steel slag aggregates for comparison with AAEM. Digital image processing was used for quantitative detection of adhesive characteristic. Results show that digital image processing can accurately and effectively measure asphalt coating ratio. Mixing time of 90?s, and asphalt content of 2.5% were finally selected as the optimum AAEM test parameters. The variance and standard deviation of coating ratios of AAEM are much smaller than that of boiling water, whether it is steel slag or basalt, indicating that the AAEM is indeed an effective method for measuring coating ratios of aggregates. The distinction of coating ratios for basalt and steel slag can be amplified by AAEM compared with boiling method. 相似文献
The defect structure of tetragonal zirconia was investigated by measuring the temperature and oxygen partial pressure dependence of the electrical conductivity and the electronic transference number. Tetragonal zirconia was a mixed electronic and ionic conductor under all conditions studied. The n -type electronic conductivity observed at high temperatures and low oxygen partial pressures was interpreted on the basis of a defect model involving fully ionized oxygen vacancies. The conductivity change associated with the monoclinic ⇒ tetragonal phase transformation was isothermal, but the rate of change was a function of the thermal history and the method of preparation of the sample. 相似文献
Spectra of xenon-129 sorbed into two high permeability polymers are reported. The polymers are the copolymer of tetrafluoroethylene and 2,2-bis(trifluoromethyl)-4,5-difluoro-1,3-dioxole as well as poly(1-trimethylsilyl-1-propyne). At room temperature, the xenon-129 shifts are smaller than in conventional glassy polymers. The smaller xenon-129 shift indicates the presence of larger sorption sites in high permeability polymers relative to conventional polymers. The temperature dependence of solubility in these polymers is drastically different from the behavior in conventional polymers. There is a rapid exponential increase in solubility in high permeability polymers as temperature decreases corresponding to a large negative enthalpy change on sorption and it is this increase in solubility which leads to a large increase in shift with decreasing temperature. Pulse field gradient (PFG) determinations of the self-diffusion constant are made for xenon, propane, pentane and a decafluoropentane in the copolymer. Rapid diffusion is observed as well as a dependence of the apparent diffusion constant on the time scale of the PFG experiment. The translational mobility of smaller simpler moieties depends less on the time scale or equivalently, the length scale of observation in the PFG NMR experiment. For larger, more complex species, the interconnectedness of high free volume domains plays a role in reducing the apparent diffusion constant as the time of measurement increases. 相似文献