(588g) Infiltration of Polymers into Disordered Nanoparticle Packings: Polymers Under Extreme Nanoconfinement

Capillary rise infiltration (CaRI) is a new method of fabricating polymer nanocomposites with extremely high fractions of nanoparticles (> 50 vol%). In CaRI, highly filled composites are formed by thermally annealing a bilayer of polymer and nanoparticle, which induces imbibition of polymer into the interstices of the nanoparticle packing. The chain dimension of the polymer, which depends on its molecular weight, can be comparable to or greater than the average pore size of the nanoparticle packing; thus this system provides a powerful platform to study the effects of extreme nanoconfinement on the transport and thermomechanical properties of polymers. I will share our current understanding of the transport phenomena and glass transition of polymers under such nanoconfinement using a combination of experimental and computational approaches.