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Polymers
Special Issues
Structure–Property Relationships of Polymers
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Structure–Property Relationships of Polymers

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Analysis and Characterization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2023) | Viewed by 3342

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Shreya Roy Choudhury

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Corning Incorporated, New York, NY, USA
Interests: chemical measurements; polymers; structure-property relationships
Dr. Rossella Arrigo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Politecnico di Torino, Department of Applied Science and Technology, Viale Teresa Michel 5, 15121 Alessandria, Italy
Interests: processing of polymers and biopolymers; polymer-based complex systems; polymer-based composites and nanocomposites; rheological behavior; structure-property relationships
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Availability of clean water, food, and energy is critical for the survivability of humankind. Food, energy, and water are inherently linked (food–energy–water nexus) and a crisis in one of the areas can have a cascading effect on the other two. This situation can also have a devastating effect on the world economy. A solution to this challenge lies in polymers. Polymer properties can be tuned to address tough challenges, and a common way to achieve this is by changing the polymer structure.

This Special Issue focuses on reviews and research manuscripts exploring the structure–property relationships in polymers that can potentially solve food-, energy-, or water-crisis-related areas. The scope of applications includes but is not limited to water desalination, energy storage, membranes, fuel cells, biopolymers, BPA-free plastics, solar cells, and sensing technologies.

It is highly encouraged that the research manuscripts consist of innovative approaches to synthesize, modify, or characterize the chemical or physical structure of polymers and understand their impact on the properties and potential applications to solve global challenges.

Dr. Shreya Roy Choudhury
Dr. Rossella Arrigo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • food–energy–water nexus
  • fuel cells
  • water desalination
  • membranes
  • biopolymers
  • BPA-free plastics

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 19829 KiB  
Article
Preparation and Properties of High-Temperature-Resistant, Lightweight, Flexible Polyimide Foams with Different Diamine Structures
by Shuhuan Yun, Xianzhe Sheng, Shengli Wang, Xing Miao, Xuetao Shi, Yongsheng Zhao, Jianbin Qin and Guangcheng Zhang
Polymers 2023, 15(12), 2609; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15122609 - 08 Jun 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1586
Abstract
Polyimide foam (PIF) is a rising star in high-end applications such as aerospace thermal insulation and military sound absorption. However, the basic rule on molecular backbone design and uniform pore formation of PIF still need to be explored. In this work, polyester ammonium [...] Read more.
Polyimide foam (PIF) is a rising star in high-end applications such as aerospace thermal insulation and military sound absorption. However, the basic rule on molecular backbone design and uniform pore formation of PIF still need to be explored. In this work, polyester ammonium salt (PEAS) precursor powders are synthesized between alcoholysis ester of 3, 3′, 4, 4′-benzophenone tetracarboxylic dianhydride (BTDE) and aromatic diamines with different chain flexibility and conformation symmetry. Then, a standard “stepwise heating” thermo-foaming approach is used to prepare PIF with comprehensive properties. A rational thermo-foaming program is designed based on in situ observation of pore formation during heating. The fabricated PIFs have uniform pore structure, and PIFBTDA-PDA shows the smallest size (147 μm) and narrow distribution. Interestingly, PIFBTDA-PDA also presents a balanced strain recovery rate (SR = 91%) and mechanical robustness (0.051 MPa at 25% strain) and its pore structure maintains regularity after 10 compression–recovery cycles, mainly due to high rigidity of the chains. Furthermore, all the PIFs possess lightweight feature (15–20 kg∙m−3), good heat resistance (Tg at 270–340 °C), thermal stability (T5% at 480–530 °C), thermal insulation properties (λ = 0.046–0.053 W∙m−1K−1 at 20 °C, λ = 0.078–0.089 W∙m−1K−1 at 200 °C), and excellent flame retardancy (LOI > 40%). The reported monomer-mediated pore-structure control strategy can provide guidelines for the preparation of high-performance PIF and its industrial applications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structure–Property Relationships of Polymers)
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15 pages, 3650 KiB  
Article
Chain Dynamics of Partially Disentangled UHMWPE around Melting Point Characterized by 1H Low-Field Solid-State NMR
by Yan Zhao, Yuling Liang, Yingjie Yao, Hao Wang, Tong Lin, Yun Gao, Xiaoliang Wang and Gi Xue
Polymers 2023, 15(8), 1910; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15081910 - 16 Apr 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1380
Abstract
Melts of ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) entangled significantly, suffering processing difficulty. In this work, we prepared partially disentangled UHMWPE by freeze-extracting, exploring the corresponding enchantment of chain mobility. Fully refocused 1H free induction decay (FID) was used to capture the difference [...] Read more.
Melts of ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) entangled significantly, suffering processing difficulty. In this work, we prepared partially disentangled UHMWPE by freeze-extracting, exploring the corresponding enchantment of chain mobility. Fully refocused 1H free induction decay (FID) was used to capture the difference in chain segmental mobility during the melting of UHMWPE with different degrees of entanglement by low-field solid-state NMR. The longer the polyethylene (PE) chain is in a less-entangled state, the harder the process of merging into mobile parts after detaching from crystalline lamella during melting. 1H double quantum (DQ) NMR was further used to obtain information caused by residual dipolar interaction. Before melting, the DQ peak appeared earlier in intramolecular-nucleated PE than in intermolecular-nucleated PE because of the strong constraints of crystals in the former one. During melting, less-entangled UHMWPE could keep disentangled while less-entangled high density polyethylene (HDPE) could not. Unfortunately, no noticeable difference was found in DQ experiments between PE melts with different degrees of entanglement after melting. It was ascribed to the small contribution of entanglements compared with total residual dipolar interaction in melts. Overall, less-entangled UHMWPE could reserve its disentangled state around the melting point long enough to achieve a better way of processing. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structure–Property Relationships of Polymers)
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