Grafting maleic anhydride onto EVA and effect on the physical and rheological properties of PETG/EVA-g-MAH blends

Maleic anhydride (MAH) was grafted onto ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer (EVA) in the internal mixer in the presence of dicumyl peroxide (DCP), and a prepared reactive compatibilizer, MAH-g-EVA, was blended with Poly (ethylene glycol-co-cyclohexane-1,4-dimethanol terephthalate) (PETG). The gel content determination and element analysis (EA) was performed to confirm the grafting reaction. It was found that grafting reaction of MAH on to EVA could compete with crosslinking reaction of DCP during the modification process. In addition, the introduction of small amount of MAH showed a great effect on reducing gel content by decreasing crosslink reaction. As MAH content increased, grafted MAH concentration increased, whereas the grafting yield decreased. It was also confirmed that MAH-g-EVA acted as a reactive compatibilizer in the blend with PETG, and enhanced compatibility by reacting with the hydroxyl end groups, OH, of PETG. Addition of EVA in the blend leads a plastic deformation of PETG, and MAH had a great effect on enhancing interfacial adhesion resulting in significant increasing of % strain; however, improved compatibility could not be changed much in low strain tensile strength and Young's modulus. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012     

Mechanical property enhancement of non‐bonding electrospun mats via adhesive

In the present study, the effect of adhesive on the morphology of different electrospun polymeric mats was investigated. The modification of two polymers, poly(methyl methacrylate) and poly(vinyl chloride), was carried out by blending the polymers with different amounts of poly(butyl acrylate) (PBA) adhesive to investigate the effect of different amounts of adhesive with heat hardener in hybrid mats. The introduction of various concentrations of PBA into different polymer solutions led to the formation of point‐bonded electrospun fibrous mats. Scanning electron microscopy images indicated that point‐bonded polymer/adhesive fibers were uniformly distributed throughout the mats. Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, contact angle measurements and thermogravimetric analysis were used to study the different properties of the hybrid mats. The tensile strength of the blended fibrous electrospun mats was increased effectively. This enhancement of the mechanical properties of the mats due to the presence of adhesive increases the number of potential applications of the electrospun mats, especially for mechanically weak polymers. Copyright © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry     

Direct stamping of silver nanoparticles toward residue-free thick electrode

Direct stamping of functional materials has been developed for cost-effective and process-effective manufacturing of nano/micro patterns. However, there remain several challenging issues like the perfect removal of the residual layer and realization of high aspect ratio. We have demonstrated facile fabrication of flexible strain sensors that have microscale thick interdigitated capacitors with no residual layer by a simple direct stamping with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). Polyurethane (PU) prepolymer was utilized as an adhesive layer to transfer AgNPs more efficiently during the separation step of the flexible stamp from directly stamped AgNPs. Scanning electron microscopy images and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy analysis revealed residue-free transfer of microscale thick interdigitated electrodes onto two different flexible substrates (elastomeric and brittle) for the application to highly sensitive strain sensors.     

Erratum to: Nanocomposite quasi-solid-state electrolyte for highsafety lithium batteries

Nano Research - The third affiliation of the authors in the original version of this article was unfortunately wrongly written on page 3092 and the first page of the ESM. Instead of 3School of...     

A service composition oriented framework for configuring SMeet multiparty collaboration environments

To enable remote collaboration among knowledge workers, there has been extensive research about prototyping network-based multiparty collaboration environments. Particularly, it is necessary to solve the configuration difficulties that arise from different settings of various tools in traditional room-based collaboration systems. To ease these difficulties, in this paper, we design a service composition oriented framework for the SMeet (Smart Meeting Space) multiparty collaboration environments by following the SOA (service oriented architecture) design principles. The proposed framework aims to facilitate the flexible configuration of diverse networked devices and associated application tools for successful multiparty collaboration. According to a pre-defined template, it helps the operators and users to compose services that are dispersed across remote sites. By leveraging open-source agent middleware, we also develop a SMeet toolkit with GUIs (graphical user interfaces) to assist the easily-configurable realization of SMeet multiparty collaboration environments. The developed SMeet toolkit is utilized to realize a remote collaboration scenario between two SMeet prototype sites, by enabling the network-based interactive sharing of HD-quality media on networked tiled displays (NeTDs).     

Twinning-Induced Plasticity Aided High Ductile Duplex Stainless Steel

Extended ductility over 70 pct was realized in duplex stainless steel by implementing twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP). The steel also exhibited the tensile strength over 800 MPa. The steel chemistry was designed so that the stacking fault energy of austenite was high enough to induce TWIP during deformation. After the initial decrease, the strain hardening rate increased at high tensile strains above ~30 pct. The microstructures of austenite at such high strains were manifested by well-developed primary twins and nanotwins between them, which effectively block dislocation motion. This observation ensures that extended ductility and high strength of a newly designed duplex stainless steel are originated from TWIP in austenite.