Conflicting Effects of Extreme Nanoconfinement on the Translational and Segmental Motion of Entangled Polymers

TL;DR

This study reveals that extreme nanoconfinement can cause opposite effects on the translational and segmental motions of entangled polymers, with translational mobility increasing and segmental mobility decreasing under confinement.

Contribution

It demonstrates that nanoconfinement can induce conflicting effects on polymer dynamics, showing translational motion enhancement and segmental motion slowdown in nanoparticle packings.

Findings

Translational motion of polymers is significantly enhanced in 27 nm nanoparticle packings.

Segmental motion is slowed down, with increased glass transition temperature, under confinement.

Effects depend on nanoparticle size, with 7 nm NPs causing more pronounced slowdown.

Abstract

Physically confining polymers into nanoscale pores induces significant changes in their dynamics. Although different results on the effect of confinement on the dynamics of polymers have been reported, changes in the segmental mobility of polymers typically are correlated with changes in their chain mobility due to increased monomeric relaxation times. In this study, we show that translational and segmental dynamics of polymers confined in disordered packings of nanoparticles can exhibit completely opposite behavior. We monitor the capillary rise dynamics of entangled polystyrene (PS) in disordered packings of silica nanoparticles (NPs) of 7 and 27 nm diameter. The effective viscosity of PS in 27 nm $SiO_2$ NP packings, inferred based on the Lucas-Washburn equation, is significantly smaller than the bulk viscosity, and the extent of reduction in the translational motion due to confinement increases with the molecular weight of PS, reaching 4 orders of magnitude reduction for PS with a molecular weight of 4M g/mol. The glass transition temperature of entangled PS in the packings of 27 nm $SiO_2$ NPs, however, increases by 45 K, indicating significant slowdown of segmental motion. Interestingly, confinement of the polymers into packings made of 7 nm $SiO_2$ NPs results in molecular weight-independent effective viscosity. The segmental dynamics of PS in 7 nm $SiO_2$ NP packings are slowed down even further as evidenced by 65 K increase in glass transition temperature. These seemingly disparate effects are explained by the microscopic reptation-like transport controlling the translational motion and the physical confinement affecting the segmental dynamics under extreme nanoconfinement.