Dynamics and microstructure of entangled supramolecular networks

Scientists have constantly looked for new routes and methodologies to modify and improve the properties of the synthetic polymers. One of the greatest treatment of all, inspired from the nature, is to incorporate non-covalent transient interactions into polymers. The utilization of hydrogen bonds, coordination chemistry and ion-dipole interactions to obtain so called supramolecular networks has attracted wide spread interest in recent years, since adaptive and functional synthetic polymers with new properties are obtained. The goal of this work is to gain comprehensive understanding over self-organization and molecular dynamics of model entangled supramolecular networks. We investigated the effects of supramolecular assemblies on the relaxation mechanism of entangled associating polymers, from smallest statistical segment to macroscopic flow. In addition, we studied alteration of the self-assembling dynamics of supramolecular moieties in the environment of the polymer melt. The outcome enables us to control mechanical and viscoelastic properties of self-assembling systems by simultaneously taking advantage of both entanglement and transient supramolecular interactions.(FSA - Sciences de l'ingénieur) -- UCL, 201