Cooperative strings in glassy nanoparticles. Issue 1 (10th June 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Arutkin, Maxence; Raphaël, Elie; Forrest, James A.; Salez, Thomas
• Is Part Of: Soft matter. Volume 13:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 141
• Page End: 146
• Publication Date: 2016-06-10
• Subjects: Soft condensed matter -- Periodicals; 530.413
• DOI: 10.1039/c6sm00724d
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1744-683X

Abstract

Abstract : Motivated by recent experimental results on glassy polymer nanoparticles, we develop a minimal theoretical framework for the glass transition in spherical confinement. Abstract : Motivated by recent experimental results on glassy polymer nanoparticles, we develop a minimal theoretical framework for the glass transition in spherical confinement. This is accomplished using our cooperative-string model for supercooled dynamics, that was successful at recovering the bulk phenomenology and describing the thin-film anomalies. In particular, we obtain predictions for the mobile-layer thickness as a function of temperature, and for the effective glass-transition temperature as a function of the radius of the spherical nanoparticle – including the existence of a critical particle radius below which vitrification never occurs. Finally, we compare the theoretical results to experimental data on polystyrene from the recent literature, and we discuss the latter.