TY - JOUR
T1 - Directly Measuring the Complete Stress-Strain Response of Ultrathin Polymer Films
AU - Liu, Yujie
AU - Chen, Yu Cheng
AU - Hutchens, Shelby
AU - Lawrence, Jimmy
AU - Emrick, Todd
AU - Crosby, Alfred J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2015/9/22
Y1 - 2015/9/22
N2 - The inherently fragile nature of ultrathin polymer films presents difficulties to the measurement of their mechanical properties, which are of interest in packaging, electronics, separations, and other manufacturing fields. More fundamentally, the direct measurement of ultrathin film mechanical properties is necessary for understanding changes in intrinsic material properties at reduced size scales, for example, when the film thickness alters the equilibrium configuration of the polymer chains. We introduce a method for ultrathin film tensile testing that stretches a two-dimensionally macroscopic, yet nanoscopically thin, polymer film on the surface of water. For polystyrene films, we observe a precipitous decrease in mechanical properties (Youngs modulus, strain at failure, and nominal stress at failure) for film thicknesses down to 15 nm, less than the characteristic size of an individual polymer chain, yielding new insights into the changes in polymer chain entanglements in confined states.
AB - The inherently fragile nature of ultrathin polymer films presents difficulties to the measurement of their mechanical properties, which are of interest in packaging, electronics, separations, and other manufacturing fields. More fundamentally, the direct measurement of ultrathin film mechanical properties is necessary for understanding changes in intrinsic material properties at reduced size scales, for example, when the film thickness alters the equilibrium configuration of the polymer chains. We introduce a method for ultrathin film tensile testing that stretches a two-dimensionally macroscopic, yet nanoscopically thin, polymer film on the surface of water. For polystyrene films, we observe a precipitous decrease in mechanical properties (Youngs modulus, strain at failure, and nominal stress at failure) for film thicknesses down to 15 nm, less than the characteristic size of an individual polymer chain, yielding new insights into the changes in polymer chain entanglements in confined states.
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U2 - 10.1021/acs.macromol.5b01473
DO - 10.1021/acs.macromol.5b01473
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84942094649
SN - 0024-9297
VL - 48
SP - 6534
EP - 6540
JO - Macromolecules
JF - Macromolecules
IS - 18
ER -