Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2006. / Includes bibliography.

Alkali-soluble resins (ASRs) were prepared by (i) solution and (ii) emulsion polymerization. All ASRs were synthesized with number-average molar masses < 20,000 g mol-1 and all had 15 wt% methacrylic acid 5 wt% styrene, the remaining 80 wt% was composed of either methyl methacrylate or a combination of methyl methacrylate and ethyl acrylate. All emulsion ASRs were made to 20% solids, with volume-average particle diameters (dv) in the region 30 – 50 nm, with a glass transition temperature of 80 – 120 °C. Emulsion polymerization was the preferred route for ASR synthesis, to allow further studies on their dissolution behaviour. Before their use as colloidal stabilizers, the dissolution behaviour of the ASRs needed to beinvestigated e.g. effect of temperature, molar mass, and composition. Particle size and absorbance measurements were taken during dissolution of ASRs to achieve 100%neutralization and these were shown to have two stages, an apparent particle swelling (whichwas rapid), and a slower, decrease in particle size as water-soluble polymeric material wasdiffusing out of the ASR particles. From this, further interpretation allowed for calculating the diffusion coefficient of the ASR polymer using the Stokes-Einstein equation. Time-domain nuclear magnetic resonance (TD-NMR) was employed to enhance understanding of what is occurring in the ASR particles, and in the aqueous, continuous phase. The final aspect of this project was to use the ASRs prepared as colloidal stabilizers in emulsion polymerizations of butyl acrylate (BA) and butyl methacrylate (BMA) using varying levels and also the effect of adding additional surfactant. The results show that the effect of ASR molar mass, the concentration of stabilizer, and also the impact of the EA-containing ASR greatly influence stability, whereby lower ASR molar mass, higher levels of stabilizer and including EA greatly benefit colloidal stability in PBA latexes. In PBMA latexes, a similar trend was also observed, but, the presence of ethyl acrylate (EA) in the ASR backbone has a detrimental effect on the colloidal stability, caused by the inability of grafting to occur between the ASR and PBMA.

High performance polymer composites are materials with emphasis on specific chemical and mechanical properties due to their broad scope of applications. The main advantages are high strenght and toughness in comparison with their low weight and density. An increased adhesion at composite interfaces is important to ensure excellent composite properties. Bundles of glass fibers were coated by plasma-polymerised interlayers of tetravinylsilane (pp-TVS) of different thicknesses and at different effective powers. The prepared interlayers of pp-TVS were analyzed to evaluate chemical composition (RBS, FTIR, XPS) and mechanical properties (NI-AFM). Microindentation test and fiber-bundle pull-out test were used to determine the interfacial shear strenght.

<p>U ovom radu pripremljeni su različiti polimerni i keramički nanostrukturni materijali, u cilju ispitivanja uticaja vrste i udela nanopunila (čađ, fuleren, silicijum(IV)oksid, aluminijum(III)oksid i titanijum(IV)oksid) na strukturu, reolo&scaron;ko i toplotno pona&scaron;anje kompozita, dobijenih na osnovu stirena, metilmetakrilata i akrilamida, primenom različitih metoda sinteze. Ispitivan je uticaj prisustva različitog udela nanočestica (1, 3 i 5 %<em> m/m</em>) na kinetiku polimerizacije stirena, i na oblast prelaska u staklasto stanje polistirenskih hibridnih materijala. Sintetisana je i serija nanokompozita polimerizacijom metilmetakrilata u prisustvu čestica (silicijum(IV)oksid, aluminijum (III)oksid i titanijum(IV)oksid) različitih dimenzija i hidrofilnosti, ali istog zapreminskog udela (1 %<em> v/v</em>). Na osnovu primene izotermne diferencijalno skanirajude metode (DSC), razvijen je kinetički model za opisivanje dve razičite reakcije tokom polimerizacije vinilnih monomera (reakciju prvog reda i samoubrzanje), i izračunata je debljina međufaznog sloja polimera na čestici u cilju određivanja njegovog uticaja na temperaturu prelaska u staklasto stanje hibridnih materijala. Za ispitivanje strukture i morfologije polistiren/silicijum(IV)oksid nanokompozita dobijenih metodom isparavanja rastvarača, kori&scaron;dene su infracrvena spektroskopija sa Furijeovom transformacijom (FT-IR) i skanirajuda elektronska mikroskopija (SEM). Radi utvrđivanja uticaja udela hidrofobnog silicijum(IV)oksida (2, 5, 10, 15 i 30 %<em> m/m</em>) na toplotnu postojanost polistirenskih materijala, primenjene su istovremena termogravimetrijska i diferencijalno skanirajuda analiza (TG-DSC). Takođe, određen je uticaj veličine čestice fulerena C60 i submikronske čestice čađi na reolo&scaron;ka svojstva polistirenskih kompozita sintetisanih taloženjem polimera iz rastvora. Ispitivanjem reolo&scaron;kog pona&scaron;anja hibridnih materijala, proučavan je uticaj veličine čestica, molekulske mase polimera i indeksa polidisperznosti na viskoznost polistirenskih kompozita. Na osnovu<em> in-situ</em> reolo&scaron;kih analiza polimerizacije u toku želiranja suspenzije nanočestica aluminijum(III)oksida u vodenom rastvoru monomera metakrilamida i N,N&rsquo;-metilenbisakrilamida, utvrđena je jaka katalitička aktivnost povr&scaron;ine aluminijum(III)oksida na nastajanje slobodnih radikala. Radi nalaženja veze između željenih svojstava keramičkih proizvoda i načina njihovog dobijanja, proučavan je uticaj uslova vođenja polimerizacije na slaganje čestica u dobijenom odlivku i na gustinu krajnjeg sinterovanog proizvoda.</p> / <p>In this work, polymeric and ceramic nanostructured materials were prepared using different methods, in order to investigate the influence of nanofiller content and its type (carbon black, fullerene, silica, alumina and titania) on the structure, rheological and thermal behavior of composites, based on styrene, methylmethacrylate and acrylamide. The effect of particles content (1, 3 and 5 wt. %) on the kinetics of styrene radical polymerization and on the glass transition temperature of polystyrene/silica composites was investigated. A series of polymethylmethacrylate nanocomposites containing 1 vol. % of silica, alumina or titania particles (differing in dimensions and surface properties) was obtained. On the basis of isothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), the kinetic model for describing two reactions during vinyl monomer polymerization (first order and autoacceleration) was developed, and the thickness of interfacial layer formed on nanoparticle surface was determined, in order to investigate its influence on the glass transition temperature of polymethylmethacrylate hybrid materials. The structure and the morphology of polystyrene/silica nanocomposites prepared by solvent evaporation were investigated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The influence of&nbsp; hydrophobic silica content (2, 5, 10, 15 and 30 wt. %) on polystyrene thermal stability was studied by simultaneous thermogravimetry and differential scanning calorimetry (TG-DSC). The effect of fullerene C60 and submicron carbon black particle size on rheological properties of polystyrene composites prepared by the rapid coprecipitation was determined. Following the rheology of hybrid melts, the influence of filler size, molecular weight and polydispersity of polymer matrix on the viscosity of polystyrene composites was studied. On the basis of in-situ rheology analysis of polymerization process during the gelation of alumina nanoparticles suspension in aqueous solution of methacrylamide and N,N&rsquo;- methylene bisacrylamide monomers, the strong catalytic activity of alumina surface on the free radicals formation was determined. In order to find the correlation between desired properties of ceramic products and their preparation procedure route, the influence of polymerization conditions on the green body structure and sintered body density was studied in details.</p>

The aim of the present work was to screen the main methods for the synthesis of conjugated polymers for their suitability in the preparation of conductive polymer brushes. The main focus was put on the grafting of intrinsically soluble substituted regioregular polyalkylthiophenes because of their excellent optoelectronic properties. The resulting polymer films were characterized and their optoelectrical properties studied. For the first time, a synthesis of conductive polymer brushes on solid substrates using “grafting-from” method was performed. The most important, from my opinion, finding of this work is that regioregular head-to-tail poly-3-alkylthiophenes – benchmark materials for organic electronics - can be now selectively grafted from appropriately-terminated surfaces to produce polymer brushes of otherwise soluble polymers - the architecture earlier accessible only in the case of non-conductive polymers. In particular, we developed a new method to grow P3ATs via Kumada Catalyst Transfer Polymerization (KCTP) of 2-bromo-5-chloromagnesio-3-alkylthiophene. Exposure of the initiator layers to monomer solutions leads to selective chain-growth polycondensation of the monomers from the surface, resulting into P3AT brushes in a very economical way. The grafting process was investigated in detail and the structure of the resulting composite films was elucidated using several methods. The obtained data suggests that the grafting process occurs not only at the poly(4-bromstyrene) (PS-Br)/polymerization solution interface, but also deeply inside the swollen PS-Br films, penetrable for the catalyst and for the monomer The grafting process was investigated in detail and the structure of the resulting composite film was elucidated using ellipsometry, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS), and Conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM). The obtained data suggests that the grafting process occurs not only at the poly(4-bromostyrene), PS-Br/polymerization solution interface, but also deeply inside the swollen PS-Br film, which is penetrable for the catalyst and the monomer. The process results in an interpenetrated PS-Br/P3HT network, in which relatively short poly(3-hexylthiophene), P3HT grafts emanate from long, cross-linked PS-Br chains. A further method investigated during our work was to covalently graft regioirregular P3HT to substrates modified by macromolecular anchors using oxidative polymerization of 3HT with FeCl3. P3HT layers with variable thicknesses from 30 nm up to 200 nm were produced using two steps of polymerization reaction. The P3HT obtained by oxidative polymerization had always an irregular structure, which was a result of the starting monomer being asymmetric, which is undesired for electronic applications. The third method for the production of conductive polymer brushes was to graft regioregular poly(3,3''-dioctyl-[2,2';5',2'']terthiophene) (PDOTT) by electrochemical oxidative polycondensation of symmetrically substituted 3,3''-dioctyl-[2,2';5',2'']terthiophene (DOTT). A modification of the supporting ITO electrode by the self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of compounds having polymerizable head-groups with properly adjusted oxidative potentials was found to be essential to achieve a covalent attachment of PDOTT chains. The polymer films produced show solvatochromism and electrochromism, as well as the previous two methods. After polymerization, the next step towards building organic electronic devices is applying the methods obtained in nano- and microscale production. Block copolymers constitute an attractive option for such surface-engineering, due to their ability to form a variety of nanoscale ordered phase-separated structures. However, block copolymers containing conjugated blocks are less abundant compared to their non-conjugated counterparts. Additionally, their phase behaviour at surfaces is not always predictable. We demonstrated in this work, how surface structures of non-conductive block copolymers, such as P4VP-b-PS-I, can be converted into (semi)conductive P4VP-b-PS-graft-P3HT chains via a surface-initiated polymerization of P3HT (Kumada Catalyst Transfer Polymerization (KCTP) from reactive surface-grafted block copolymers. This proves that our method is applicable to develop structured brushes of conductive polymers. We believe that it can be further exploited for novel, stimuli-responsive materials, for the construction of sensors, or for building various opto-electronic devices. The methods developed here can in principle be adapted for the preparation of any conductive block copolymers and conductive polymers, including other interesting architectures of conductive polymers, such as block copolymers, cylindrical brushes, star-like polymers, etc. To this end, one needs to synthesize properly-designed and multi-functional Ni-initiators before performing the polycondensation.