Abstract
We synthesized model polyethylene (PE) samples with nearly monodispersed molecular weight distribution and different fractions of short-chain branches to investigate the influences of the branch structure on the rheological properties. The activation energy of the flow process showed linear relations with the weight fractions of comonomer and the short-chain branch. These results suggest that the friction of the chain motion is dominated by the amount of the short-chain branch. The zero-shear viscosity showed a power law to Mw with an exponent of about 3.3 for all linear and branched PEs. The branched PEs showed large entanglement molecular weights compared with the linear PEs because the introduction of the short-chain branches results in the increase of the average molecular weight per backbone unit. Moreover, the introduction of the short-chain branches has no influence on the strain-hardening under an extensional elongation process, indicating that the short-chain branches only affect the friction.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists (Grant Number 19J01025) and JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number 20K15345). The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous donation of MAO from Tosoh-Finechem Co. Ltd. We are also grateful to Digital Manufacturing Education and Research Center for high temperature GPC measurements.
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Kida, T., Doi, Y., Tanaka, R. et al. Rheological properties of linear and short-chain branched polyethylene with nearly monodispersed molecular weight distribution. Rheol Acta 60, 511–519 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00397-021-01286-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00397-021-01286-0