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Polyetherimides are an important class of engineering thermoplastics used in a broad range of industries and applications because of their high heat resistance and stability, high strength and moduli, excellent electrical properties over a wide range of temperatures and frequencies, good processability, good adhesive properties, and chemical stability. All-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is a useful tool to study polymers, but the accessible length and time scales are limited. In this thesis, we explore several computational methods that go beyond all-atom MD simulations to investigate polyetherimides. First, we have developed a transferable coarse-grained MD model of polyetherimides that captures their mechanical and thermal expansion properties. Our results show that in order to make the model transferable, it is critical to include an entropic correction term in the coarse-grained force field and require the coarse-grained model to capture the thermal expansion property of polyetherimides. Secondly, we have constructed a predictive model of the glass transition temperature (Tg) for polyimides by using machine-learning algorithms to analyze existing data on Tg reported in the literature. The predictive model is validated by comparing its predictions to experimental data not used in the training process of the model. We further demonstrate that the diffusion coefficients of small gas molecules can be quickly computed with all-atom MD simulations and used to determine Tg. Finally, we have developed a Monte Carlo (MC) program to model the polymerization process of branched polyetherimides and to compute their molecular weight distribution for a wide range of systems, including fully reacted, partially reacted, stoichiometric, and nonstoichiometric ones. The MC results are compared to the predictions of the Flory-Stockmayer theory of branched polymers and an excellent agreement is found below the gel point of the system under consideration. Above the gel point, the Flory- Stockmayer theory starts to fail but the MC method can still be used to quickly determine the molecular weight distribution of branched polyetherimides under very general conditions. / Doctor of Philosophy / Polyetherimides are an important category of engineering plastics with wide applications in many fields because of their superior mechanical, thermal, chemical, and electrical properties. All-atom molecular dynamics simulations serve as a useful tool to study the properties of polyetherimides in silico. However, such simulations are computationally expensive and therefore limited to small system sizes and short time scales. To overcome these issues, we employed various computational techniques in this thesis to model polyetherimides. First, we have developed a coarse-grained model of polyetherimides where atoms are grouped into beads. We show that molecular dynamics simulations on the basis of the coarse-grained model can be used to provide a reasonable description of the mechanical and thermal expansion properties of polyetherimides. Secondly, we have constructed a predictive model of the glass transition temperature, which is the temperature at which a material enters a glassy state when cooled rapidly, of polyimides using machine-learning algorithms. This model is capable of estimating the glass transition temperature of polyimides within an accuracy of ± 15 K even for those not synthesized yet. We further show that the diffusion coefficients of gas molecules, in addition to the polymer density, can be computed accurately with all-atom molecular dynamics simulations and used to determine the glass transition temperature of polyimides. Finally, we have developed a Monte Carlo scheme to efficiently model the polymerization and compute the chain-length distribution of branched polyetherimides under very general conditions. The results from Monte Carlo simulations are compared to the predictions of the Flory-Stockmayer theory of branched polymers. The range of applicability of the theory is revealed. Overall, we have demonstrated several computational techniques that can be used to efficiently model polyetherimides, potentially other polymers as well, beyond the widely-used all-atom molecular dynamics simulations.

When a liquid is cooled to produce a glass, its dynamics, dominated by the structural relaxation, slows down dramatically, becoming of ≈100 s at the glass-transition temperature, Tg. At a slightly higher temperature (≈1.2Tg), a second, faster process, known as Johari-Goldstein (βJG) decouples from the structural one and remains active even in the glassy-state. It is nowadays established that the βJG -process is deeply connected to the structural one, though its microscopic origin and its role in the glass transition are still under debate. In this Thesis the spatial and temporal properties of the atomic motions within the JG-relaxation are investigated in two mono-hydroxyl alcohols using the technique known as nuclear γ-resonance time-domain interferometry (TDI). The results here obtained show that, within the βJ-relaxation, about one molecule out of four undergoes a restricted dynamics characterized by displacements of the order of 10% of the average inter-molecular distance. These re-arrangements correspond to local cage-breaking events and such un-caged molecules form a percolating cluster within the sample. At the same time we also found evidences of larger re-arrangements, occurring at a longer timescale with respect to the cage-breaking events and reaching out at least to the inter-molecular length-scale.

Les systèmes à base de biopolymères à faible teneur en humidité sont couramment rencontrés dans les aliments. Bien entendu, il est primordial de comprendre les bases physiques de leur qualité: texture, performances dans le temps ou en fonction de leur composition. Le vieillissement physique des systèmes composites rend les changements survenant dans le stockage des produits comestibles difficiles à prévoir. Les objectifs de ce travail étaient d'évaluer l'incidence de la présence de saccharose et de la teneur en eau de fabrication sur les propriétés physico-chimiques du produit fini. La stabilité physique de ces matériaux a été contrôlée grâce à une étude à différentes échelles moléculaires. Ensuite, les relations entre les données multi-échelles ont été examinées. L'effet du saccharose (0 à 20%) et de l'eau d'alimentation (10 et 15%) sur les mélanges d'extrusion a été étudié à l'aide d'un extrudeur double vis conduit dans les mêmes conditions. Les propriétés physiques et microstructurales des produits extrudés expansés ont été examinées sous diverses conditions d'humidité relative. La réduction des teneurs en sucre et en eau d’alimentation a fait augmenter la pression et l’énergie mécanique spécifique, ce qui a réduit la dégradation de l’amidon et augmenté la viscosité dans l’extrudeur en particulier à la teneur en eau la plus élevée. L'augmentation de la pression dans l’extrudeur a entraîné une expansion plus importante des extrudés. Par contre, la technique d'imagerie neutronique montré que le saccharose réduisait la taille des pores, et donc augmentait la densité apparente et ce qui était particulièrement évident en utilisant. Cette technique a été appliquée pour la première fois sur des produits extrudés. Les images de tomographie 2D ont indiqué des différences structurelles internes entre les extrudés à différentes teneurs en saccharose et stockés à humidité relative différente. Toutefois, l'analyse d'images 3D a montré que l'impact de ces facteurs sur la distribution de la taille des pores et le taux de porosité n'était pas significatif. En fin d'extrusion, les échantillons étaient à l'état amorphe à la suite de la gélatinisation de l'amidon et de la fonte du sucre. Leursrs propriétés thermiques ont été analysées par analyse enthalpique différentielle (AED) et les températures e transition vitreuse ont été étudiées. Les thermogrammess d’AED ont été minutieusement étudiés via une déconvolution de la dérivée première de la variation d’enthalpie. Cette approche a mis en évidence que les systèmes composites étudiés présentaient des phases multiples avec des transitions vitreuses distinctes. Ces dernières sont associées à une phase riche en polymère (amidon principalement) et / ou à une phase riche en plastifiant (sucre) dont le comportement dépendait de la teneur en eau de l'échantillon. Les isothermes de sorption ont montré qu’aux faibles Aw et pour une valeur donnée, a la teneur en eau des extrudés diminuait avec l’augmentation des teneurs en saccharose et que l'effet inverse était observé aux aw élevées. L’étude de la cinétique apparente de lala diffusion de l'eau a mis en évidence deux sites de sorption différents. Le premier est caractérisé par une cinétique quasi constante qui pourrait correspondre à un phénomène d'adsorption à la surface. Le second site présente d’abord un ralentissement initial de la cinétique de sorption, tandis qu’une forte augmentation est constatée lorsque la teneur en eau était plus élevée. Ce comportement peut être lié à un effondrement de la structure. Une étude par RMN à cyclage de champ rapide à basse fréquence a montré que les temps de relaxation dépendaient de la teneur en saccharose et en eau. Une carte de stabilité a été tracée pour modéliser les évolutions rhéologiques des matrices avec la teneur en eau en lien avec les transitions de phases des matériaux (...). / Low-moisture biopolymer-based systems are commonly encountered in food. Obviously, understanding the physical basis of their quality: e.g texture, or performance over time or as a function of their composition is of primary importance. The objectives of this work were to evaluate how the presence of sucrose and water content affects physico-chemical properties. The physical stability of these materials were monitored through an insight at different molecular scales. Then the relations between the multi-scale studies were investigated. The effect of sucrose (0–20%) and feed water (10 and 15%) on extrusion blends was studied using a twin screw extruder under the same processing settings. The physical and microstructural properties of extruded products were examined at various RH. Reducing both sugar levels and feed water increased die pressure and specific mechanical energy, as a consequence, it reduced starch degradation and increased in viscosity. The effect was more pronounced with increasing feed water content. The increased die pressure resulted in higher expansion of the porous extrudates. Sucrose was shown to increase the bulk density and reduce the pore size, this was particularly evident by using neutron imaging technique. This technique was applied for the first time in extrudate. 2D tomography images indicated internal structural differences between extrudates containing different sucrose content and stored at low and high % RH, while 3D image analysis showed impact of these factors on pore size distribution and % porosity were not significant. The extruded samples were in the amorphous state as a result of starch gelatinization and sugar melting. Their thermal properties were analyzed with DSC and their Tg were studied. The DSC thermograms were thoroughly studied through a Gaussian deconvolution of the first derivative of their heat low. This approach evidenced a multiple phase behavior with different glass transitions in composite systems. They were associated with either a polymer-rich phase and/or a plasticizer-rich phase which behavior depended on the sample water content. Physical aging accompanied with an increase in rigidity at low aw, resulted in an increased bulk density and more pronounced with increasing sucrose content. Sorption isotherms showed the water content of extrudates decreased when product contains high sucrose at low aw range and the inverse effect was observed at high aw. Apparent kinetics of water diffusion showed two different sorption sites, the first kinetics was almost constant and could be adsorption phenomena at the surface. The second one reflected first an initial slowing in dynamics whereas a sharp increase was found at higher water content. Addition of sucrose or water decreased both Tgs in extrudates. Young's modulus showed water acts as anti-plasticizer at low aw, while it shows a plasticizing effect at high aw. A stability map can explain the brittle-ductile transition occurred below Tg. Fast field cycling NMR study at low frequency highlighted that T1 depended on sucrose and water content. T1 and T2 measured using Low field NMR decrease as a function of water content, while the impact pf sucrose were not significant. T2 showing a minimum probably indicating the exchange of protons of water and macromolecules in composite system. The impact of sucrose content was not significant for T1 and for T2 at low water content. FFC NMR showed T1 results consistent with the LF NMR measurement.In conclusion, physicochemical studies of the influence of water and sucrose content on glassy materials showed that the material properties can be investigated at different levels from the macro- to the microscopic scale and these results clearly presented the need for complementary techniques to probe the dynamics in the glassy state of heterogeneous food systems that could be facilitated to manage the stability during storage of this type of dry products.

One of the most important and interesting unsolved problems of science is the nature of glassy dynamics and the glass transition. It is quite an old problem, and starting from the early20th century there have been many efforts towards a sound understanding of the phenomenon. As a result, there are a number of theories in the field, which do not entirely contradict each other, but between which the connection is not entirely clear. In the last couple of decades or so, there has been significant progress and currently we do understand many facets of the problem. But a unified theoretical framework for the varied phenomena associated with glassiness is still lacking. Mode-coupling theory, an extreaordinarily popular approach, came from Götze and co-workers in the early eighties. The theory was originally developed to describe the two¬ step decay of the time-dependent correlation functions in a glassy fluid observed near the glass transition temperature(Tg). The theory went beyond that and made a number of quantitative predictions that can be tested in experiments and simulations. However, one of the drawback of the theory is its prediction of a strong ergodic to non-ergodic transition at a temperature TMCT; no such transition exists in real systems at the temperatures at which MCT predicts it. Consequently, the predictions of the theory like the power-law divergences of the transport quantities (e.g., viscosity and relaxation time) fail at low enough temperature and the theory can not be used below TMCT. It is well understood now that MCT is some sort of a mean-field theory of the real phenomenon, and in real systems the transition predicted by MCT is at best avoided due to finite dimensions and activated processes, neither of which is taken into account in standard MCT. Despite its draw backs, even the most severe critic of the theory will be impressed by its power and the predictions in a regime where it works. Even though the non-ergodic transition predicted by the theory is averted, the MCT mechanism for the increase of viscosity and relaxation time is actually at work in real systems. The status of MCT for glass transition is ,perhaps, similar to the Curie-Weiss theory of magnetic phase transition and it will require hard work and perhaps a conceptual breakthrough to go beyond this mean-field picture. Discussion of such a theoretical framework and its possible directions are, however, beyond the scope of this thesis. In the first part of this work, we have extended the mode coupling theory to three important physical situations: the properties of fluids under strong confinement, a sheared fluid and for the growth kinetics of glassy domains. In the second part, we have studied a different class of non equilibrium phenomenon in arrested systems, the fluctuation relations for yielding. In the first chapter, we talk about some general phenomenology of the glass transition problem and a few important concepts in the field. Then we briefly discuss the physical problems to be addressed in detail later on in the thesis followed by a brief account of some of the important existing theories in the field. This list is by no means exhaustive but is intended to give a general idea of the theoretical status of the problem. We conclude this chapter with a detailed derivation of MCT and its successes and failures. This derivation is supposed to serve as a reference for the details of the calculations in later chapters. The second chapter deals with a simple theory of an important problem of lubrication and dynamics of fluid at nanoscopic scales. When a fluid is confined between two smooth surfaces down to a few molecular layers and an normal force is applied on the upper surface, it is found that one layer of fluid gets squeezed out of the geometry at a time. The theory to explain this phenomenon came from Persson and Tosatti. However, due to a mathematical error, the in-plane viscosity term played no role in the original calculation. We re-do this calculation and show that the theory is actually more powerful than was suggested originally by its proponents. In the third chapter, we work out a detailed theory for the dynamics of fluid under strong planar confinement. This theory is based on mode-coupling theory. The walls in our theory enter in terms of an external potential that impose a static inhomogeneous background density. The interaction of the density fluctuation with this static background density makes the fluid sluggish. The theory explains how the fluid under strong confinement can undergo a glassy transition at a higher temperature or lower density than the corresponding bulk fluid as has been found in experiments and simulations. One of the interesting findings of the theory is the three-step relaxation that has also been found in a variety of other cases. The fourth chapter consists of a mode-coupling calculation of a sheared fluid through the microscopic approach first suggested by Zaccarelli et al[J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 14,2413(2002)]. The various assumptions of the theory are quite clear in this approach. The main aim of this calculation is to understand how FDR enters with in the theory. The only new result is the modified form of Yvon-Born-Green(YBG) equations for a sheared fluid. Then we extend the theory for the case of a confined fluid under steady shear and show that a confined fluid will show shear thinning at a much lower shear rate than the bulk fluid. When a system is quenched past a phase transition point, phase ordering kinetics begins. The properties of the system show “aging” with time, and the characteristic length scale of the quenched system grows as one waits. The analogous question for glasses has also been asked in the contexts of various numerical and experimental works. We formulate a theory in chapter five for rationalizing these findings. We find that MCT, surprisingly, offers an answer to this key question in glass forming liquids. The challenge of this theory is that care must be taken in using some equilibrium relations like the fluctuation-dissipation relation(FDR), which is one of the key steps in most of the derivations of MCT. We find that the qualitative, and some times even the quantitative, picture is in agreement with numerical findings. A similar calculation for the spin-glass case also predicts increase of the correlation volume with the waiting time, but with a smaller exponent than the structural glass case. We extended this theory to the case of shear and find that shear cuts off the growth of the length-scale of glassy correlations when the waiting time becomes of the order of the inverse shear rate. For the case of sheared fluid, if we take the limit of the infinite waiting time, the system will reach a steady state. Then, the resulting theory will describe a fluid in sheared steady state. The advantage of this theory over the existing mode-coupling theories for a sheared fluid is that FDR has not been used in any stage. This is an important development since the sheared steady state is driven away from equilibrium. Interestingly, the theory captures a suitably-defined effective temperature and gives results that are consistent with numerical experiments of steady state fluids(both glass and granular materials). We give the details of a theoretical model for jamming and large deviations in micellar gel in the sixth chapter. This theory is motivated by experiments. Through the main ingredient of the attachment-detachment kinetics and some simple rules for the dynamics, the theory is capable of capturing all the experimental findings. The novel prediction of this work is that in a certain parameter range, the fluctuation relations may be violated although the large deviation function exists. We argue that a wider class of physical systems can be understood in terms of the present theory. In the final chapter, we summarize the problems studied in this thesis and point out some future directions.