Arnaldo Tomás Lorenzo

The structure of aqueous dispersions of poly(oligo(ethylene oxide) monomethyl methacrylate)-grafted silica nanoparticles was characterized using contrast variation small-angle neutron scattering studies. Modeling the low hybrid concentration dispersion scattering data using a fuzzy sphere and a polydisperse core–shell model, demonstrated that the polymer chains are highly swollen in the dispersions as compared to the dimensions of the free polymer chains in dilute solution. At higher hybrid concentrations, the dispersions were well described using a Percus–Yevick approximation to describe the structure factor. These structural characterization tools are excellent starting points for effective molecular level descriptors of dewetting and macroscopic phase transitions for polymer tethered hybrid nanoparticle systems.

Reactive blending of functionalized polyethylenes (PE) and polyamides (PA) is performed by carefully choosing extrusion conditions and polymeric materials in order to obtain two types of stable morphologies. The first blend type yields a co‐continuous morphology and the second type a dispersion of sub‐micron droplets of the PA phase in a PE matrix. The crystallization kinetics of the PA change from a sigmoidal classical type (for the co‐continuous blend) to first‐order kinetics in the case of the sub‐micron PA droplets. The results demonstrate an intimate relationship between blend morphology and nucleation and crystallization kinetics of the blend components. magnified image