Reversible Nanocomposite by Programming Amorphous Polymer Conformation Under Nanoconfinement
Abstract
Abstract Nanoconfinements are utilized to program how polymers entangle and disentangle as chain clusters to engineer pseudo bonds with tunable strength, multivalency, and directionality. When amorphous polymers are grafted to nanoparticles that are one magnitude larger in size than individual polymers, programming grafted chain conformations can “synthesize” high‐performance nanocomposites with moduli of ≈25GPa and a circular lifecycle without forming and/or breaking chemical bonds. These nanocomposites dissipate external stresses by disentangling and stretching grafted polymers up to ≈98% of their contour length, analogous to that of folded proteins; use both polymers and nanoparticles for load bearing; and exhibit a non‐linear dependence on composition throughout the microscopic, nanoscopic, and single‐particle levels.
Article Details
Authors (14)
Tiffany Chen
Yiwen Qian
Materials Sciences Division Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley CA 94720 USA
Antoine Laine
Materials Sciences Division Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley CA 94720 USA
Junpyo Kwon
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Luofu Liu
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering University of California Berkeley CA 94720 USA
Subhadeep Pal
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering Northwestern University Evanston IL 60208 USA
Supriya Gupta
2University of Minnesota, Division of Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation, Minneapolis, United States
Emma Vargo
Materials Sciences Division Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley CA 94720 USA
Gregory M. Su
Robert O. Ritchie
Sinan Keten
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering Northwestern University Evanston IL 60208 USA
Rui Wang
Miquel Salmeron
Ting Xu