Structure and Dynamics of Polymer/Star Polymer Composites
My first project in the Starr lab was motivated by exploring a novel polymer system, and resulted in a publication I shared with a few other Wesleyan students. Polymer composites are usually composed of a soft base and hard additives (e.g., gold or silver nanoparticles to a rubber vitrimer). Relatively less explored is the case when the additives are softer and more like the polymer themselves. Hence, we model a linear soft polymer matrix with a star polymer as the additive.
Structure and Dynamics of Composites of Star Polymers in a Linear Polymer Matrix. Cesar A. Castro Rubio, Jinpeng Fan, Max K. Hanrahan, Jack F. Douglas, and Francis W. Starr. Macromolecules 2023 56 (23), 9324-9335DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.3c01558
Phase Behavior and Surface Tension in a Dynamically-Linked Polymer Blend
One of the challenges of mixed-plastics recycling is sorting. Imperfectly-sorted recycled materials are often immiscible, and resist mixing due to high interfacial tension. Recent computational and experimental work has demonstrated dynamic crosslinks (short-lived inter-species bonds) as a viable agent for compatibilizing such blends. We implement a Metropolis-based MC algorithm for creating reversible dynamic bonds with the LAMMPS molecular dynamics simulator, which allows us to investigate the impact of dynamic crosslinking on phase behavior and surface tension.