Polymers, Volume 10, Issue 3

This paper investigated the effects of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) micro-particles on mechanical properties of polyoxymethylene (POM) composites. Since PTFE is immiscible with most polymers, the surface was etched using sodium naphthalene salt in...

Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) based ferroelectric polymers have attracted considerable attention both academically and industrially due to their tunable ferroelectric properties. By pinning the conformation of the polymer chain and the ferroelectr...

An epoxy-thiol system filled with boron nitride (BN), in the form of 80 µm agglomerates, has been investigated with a view to achieving enhanced thermal conductivity. The effect of BN content on the cure reaction kinetics has been studied by differen...

A novel composite composed of lignocellulose (LC), glutaraldehyde crosslinked chitosan (GC) and multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) was fabricated by the hot-pressing process. The effect of the additional GC and MWCNT on the mechanical strength, dime...

The functionalization of polymeric substances is of great interest for the development of innovative materials for advanced applications. For many decades, the functionalization of chitosan has been a convenient way to improve its properties with the...

Tubuliform silk is one of the seven different types of spider silks, which is well known for its unique tensile behaviour with Flat Tensile Stress–Strain (FTSS) curve. It is found that anisotropic microstructure of β-sheets is responsible for this pr...

In this work, two main fiber strengthening systems typically applied in masonry structures have been investigated: composites made of basalt and hemp fibers, coupled with inorganic matrix. Starting from the experimental results on composites, the out...

Hydrogel microcapsules are improved transplantation delivery vehicles for pharmaceuticals by effectively segregating the active ingredients from the surroundings and delivering them to a certain target site. Layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly is an attrac...

In this paper we study the release of cargo from polymeric nano-carriers under shear. Vesicles formed by two star block polymers— $A_{12}{B}_6{C}_2$ ( $ABC$ ) and $A_{12}{B}_6{A}_2$ ( $ABA$ )—and one linear block copoly...

Three different polyfunctional acrylate monomers—trimethylolpropantriacrylate (TMPTA), pentaerythritol triacrylate (PETA) and di(trimethylolpropane) tetraacrylate (DTTA)—have been used as comonomers in combination with a reactive resin consisting of...

Two new low bandgap conjugated polymers, PBDTS-ID and PBDTS-DTNT, containing isoindigo (ID) and naphtho[1,2-c:5,6-c′]bis[1,2,5]thiadiazole (NT), respectively, as an electron-deficient unit and alkylthiothienyl-substituted benzodithiophene (BDTS) as a...

The morphology of active layer for polymer solar cells is critical to enhance the performance especially for fill factor of the devices. To investigate the relationship between active layer morphology and performance of polymer solar cells (PSCs), 1,...

A mixed micelle approach is used to produce amphiphilic brush nanoparticles (ABNPs) with cadmium sulfide quantum dot (QD) cores and surface layers of densely grafted (σ = ~1 chain/nm²) and asymmetric (f_PS = 0.9) mixed polymer brushes that contain hyd...

Postoperative infection is a common risk which brings about failure in bone transplantation. In this study, nano titanium dioxide (nTiO₂) was incorporated into Polyetheretherketone/polyglycolicacid (PEEK/PGA) blends to construct antibacterial scaffol...

We have recently solved the tumbling-snake model for concentrated polymer solutions and entangled melts in the presence of both steady-state and transient shear and uniaxial elongational flows, supplemented by a variable link tension coefficient. Her...

Recently, high-resolution patterning techniques of stretchable electronics advanced extensively. An important trend is to fabricate complex circuits with varied sizes in a small area, which is a technical challenge to current conductive ink printing...

Selenium-containing monomer monophenyl maleimide selenide (MSM) was synthesized and copolymerized with styrene (St) using reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. Copolymers with controlled molecular weight and narrow m...

The surface topography of a molded part strongly affects its functional properties, such as hydrophobicity, cleaning capabilities, adhesion, biological defense and frictional resistance. In this paper, the possibility to tune and increase the hydroph...

Most factories discharge untreated wastewater to reduce costs, causing serious environmental problems. Low-cost, biological, environmentally friendly and highly effective materials for the separation of emulsified oil/water mixtures are thus in great...

We carry out extensive molecular dynamics simulations of thin films of bead-spring models of binary mixtures composed of cyclic and linear polymer chains. We study the equilibrium behavior of the polymer chains for two very different chain lengths, w...

Nonionic-zwitterionic diblock copolymers are designed to feature a coil-to-globule collapse transition with an upper critical solution temperature (UCST) in aqueous media, including physiological saline solution. The block copolymers that combine pre...

Multifunctional drug carriers have great applications in biomedical field. In this study, we introduced both polydopamine (PDA) and zwitterionic polymer of poly(3-(3-methacrylamidopropyl-(dimethyl)-ammonio)propane-1-sulfonate) (PSPP) onto the surface...

Small liquid crystal domains with random director distributions were obtained to show novel optical isotropy using a holographic exposure processes to treat chiral dopant liquid crystal cells in the isotropic phase (i.e., polymer-stabilized isotropic...

Pioglitazone has been reported in the literature to have a substantial role in the improvement of overall cognition in a mouse model. With this in mind, the aim of this study was to determine the most efficacious route for the administration of Piogl...

In this study, phosphorylated birchwood xylan was produced under alkali conditions using trisodium trimetaphosphate. Three single-factor experiments were used to explore the influences of time, temperature, and the molar ratio of trisodium trimetapho...

Dual component microencapsulated hydrophobic amine and microencapsulated isocyanate were designed and fabricated for self-healing anti-corrosion coating. In this system, novel hydrophobic polyaspartic acid ester (PAE) and isophorone diisocyanate (IPD...

Reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) is considered to be one of most famous reversible deactivation radical polymerization protocols. Benefiting from its living or controlled polymerization process, complex polymeric architectures...

In this report, the isolation and rheological characterization of cellulose nanofibrils from coir (CNFs-1) were studied and compared with the CNFs from wood (CNFs-2) and cotton (CNFs-3). Cellulose nanofibrils were isolated successfully from coir fibe...

The utilization of four types of biomass particles, including hardwood (poplar), softwood (radiata pine), crop (wheat straw) and bamboo (moso bamboo), as reinforcing fillers in preparing high density polyethylene (HDPE) based composites was studied....

We report the synthesis and properties of temperature- and pH-responsive p([NIPAm-co-PEGMA] (core)/[NIPAm-co-AAc] (shell)) nanogels with narrow size distributions, tunable sizes and increased drug loading efficiencies. The core-shell nanogels were sy...

Although various analytical methods have been established based on quantum dots (QDs), most were conducted in solution, which is inadequate for storage/transportation and rapid analysis. Moreover, the potential environmental problems caused by abando...

Herein, we report the preparation of chiral, one-dimensional coordination polymers based on trinuclear paddlewheel helices [M₃(dpa)₄]²⁺ (M = Co(II) and Ni(II); dpa = the anion of 2,2′-dipyridylamine). Enantiomeric resolution of a racemic mixture of [...

Two different types of organic montmorillonite, namely quaternary ammonium salt intercalated MMT (CMMT) and quaternary phosphonium salt intercalated MMT (PMMT) were used as fillers in the flame-retardant polyamide (PA6) based on aluminium salts of di...

The current paper studies the influence of geometrical parameters of the fused deposition modeling (FDM)—fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printing process on printed part strength for open source desktop 3D printers and the most popular material u...

Two different series of biobased polyethylene (BioPE) were used for the manufacturing of biocomposites, complemented with thermomechanical pulp (TMP) fibers. The intrinsic hydrophilic character of the TMP fibers was previously modified by grafting hy...

The authors wish to make a change to the published paper[...]

Although poly vinyl alcohol-poly acrylic acid (PVA-PAA) composites have been widely used for biomedical applications, their incorporation into double-layer assembled thin films has been limited because the interfacial binding materials negatively inf...

Molecular imprinting is a powerful technology to create artificial receptors within polymeric matrices. Although it was reported for the first time by Polyakov, eighty-four years ago, it remains, nowadays, a very challenging research area. Molecularl...

Solar photoelectric energy converted into electricity requires large surface areas with incident light and flexible materials to capture these light emissions. Currently, sunlight rays are converted to electrical energy using silicon polymeric materi...

The crystal growth of poly(ε-caprolactone) can be very effectively directed through the use of small amounts of dibenzylidene sorbitol in conjunction with modest flow fields to yield extremely high levels of the preferred polymer crystal orientation....

Poly(sodium 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonate) (PAMPSNa) was prepared via reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) radical polymerization. An ionic liquid polymer (PAMPSP₄₄₄₈) was then prepared by exchanging the pendant counter cat...

In this paper, we theoretically and experimentally evaluated the quality of volume phase transmission lenses stored in an environmentally friendly photopolymer. Holographic lenses (HLs) were obtained using symmetrical and asymmetrical experimental se...

A series of poly(vinylphenol-co-methacryisobutyl polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane) (PVPh-co-PMAPOSS) random copolymers have been synthesized through free radical copolymerizations of acetoxystyrene with methacryisobutyl POSS monomer and subsequen...

Molecularly imprinted mesoporous materials (MIMs) were synthesized to improve the adsorption performance of Cytochrome c (Cyt c) by using an imidazolium-based amphiphilic ionic liquid 1-octadecyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (C₁₈MIMCl) as surfactant...

Functional core-shell-structured particles have attracted considerable attention recently. This paper reviews the synthetic methods and morphologies of various electro-stimuli responsive polyaniline (PANI)-coated core-shell-type microspheres, includi...

The arctic strain of Chlorella sp. (Chlorella-Arc) exists in the coldest and driest arctic ecosystems, and it is a new resource of active polysaccharides. The extraction of crude polysaccharide from Chlorella-Arc was optimized using the response surf...

Continuing efforts to develop novel smart materials are anticipated to upgrade the quality of life of humans. Thermo-responsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) and glucose-responsive phenylboronic acid—typical representatives—are often integrated as mult...

In this paper, chitosan (CS)/graphene oxide (GO) composite films were prepared, and the effect of γ-ray irradiation on the properties of composite films was investigated. The irradiation crosslinking reaction occurred in composite films with the exis...

Experimental and theoretical studies have been performed on the single-screw extrusion of wood–plastics composites. Experimental research has been carried out on the flow and melting of polypropylene (PP)-based composites with different wood flour (W...

α and β crystalline phases of poly(ethylene furanoate) (PEF) were determined using X-ray powder diffraction by structure resolution in direct space and Rietveld refinement. Moreover, the α’ structure of a PEF sample was refined from data previously r...