Combinatorial Methods for Investigations in Polymer Materials Science
- PDF / 2,686,539 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 45 Downloads / 244 Views
Combinatorial
Methods for Investigations in Polymer Materials Science
J. Carson Meredith, Alamgir Karim, and Eric J. Amis Abstract We review recent advances in the development of combinatorial methods for polymer characterization. Applied to materials research, combinatorial methodologies allow efficient testing of structure–property hypotheses (fundamental characterization) as well as accelerated development of new materials (materials discovery). Recent advances in library preparation and high-throughput screening have extended combinatorial methods to a wide variety of phenomena encountered in polymer processing. We first present techniques for preparing continuous-gradient polymer “libraries” with controlled variations in temperature, composition, thickness, and substrate surface energy. These libraries are then used to characterize fundamental properties such as polymer-blend phase behavior, thin-film dewetting, block-copolymer order–disorder transitions, and cell interactions with surfaces of biocompatible polymers. Keywords: combinatorial libraries, high-throughput combinatorial methods, microstructure, polymers.
Introduction The fundamental characterization of polymers is driven by their applications in structural materials, packaging, microelectronics, coatings, bioengineering, and nanotechnology. Current trends in advanced materials demand finer control of chemistry, morphology, surface patterns, and topography and a focus on multicomponent mixtures, composites, and thin films. These systems are complex due to phase transitions, reactions, transport behavior, and interfacial phenomena that occur during synthesis and processing. In addition, a large number of variables control these complex phenomena, including composition, solvent, temperature, annealing history, pressure, and thickness. Conventional microscopy, spectroscopy, and analytical tools for polymer characteri-
330
zation were designed for detailed characterization over a limited set of variable combinations. These approaches can be used to test hypotheses efficiently if the most relevant variable combinations are known a priori or can be predicted from theory. However, the complex phenomena and large variable spaces present in multicomponent, multiphase, and interfacial polymers strain the capabilities of conventional one-sample-for-one-measurement polymer characterization. High-throughput techniques are needed for the efficient synthesis and characterization of complex polymeric systems. Combinatorial methods present a paradigm for such efficient polymer synthesis and characterization. Combinatorial methods involve a process of (1) experimental
design, (2) the creation of sample libraries, (3) high-throughput measurements, and (4) informatics for the efficient modeling of results in the form of structure–property relationships. The key to applying this process to polymers is the availability of techniques to prepare sample ”libraries” containing hundreds to thousands of variable combinations each. In addition, highthroughput measurements
Data Loading...
