Most Viewed Article: Volumetric and Energetic Properties of Polystyrene and Polyethylene Oxide Affected by Thermal Cycling - Congratulations to Benoit Minisini
- Katherine Hollingsworth
- Apr 30
- 1 min read
Big congratulations to Materials Design's, Benoit MINISINI, for having the most-viewed article! Your insights clearly resonated with readers and sparked real interest—well deserved recognition for great work. 👏 Read the article, Energetic Properties of Polystyrene and Polyethylene Oxide Affected by Thermal Cycling.
Abstract below:
Volumetric and Energetic Properties of Polystyrene and Polyethylene Oxide Affected by Thermal Cycling
Authors: Benoit Minisini, Armand Soldera
Abstract: Polymers are known to exhibit hysteresis in their thermal and volumetric properties between cooling and heating at the glass transition. A thorough investigation of this hysteresis using atomistic simulation has not been proposed until now. In this work, the glass transition is studied through controlled heating and cooling protocols at a constant rate for two polymers—polystyrene (PS) and polyethylene oxide (PEO)—with different molecular weights.
The analysis includes temperature-dependent evaluations of specific volume, coefficient of thermal expansion, total energy, and constant-volume heat capacity. The calculated properties for PS and PEO align well with experimental data, confirming the accuracy of the TraPPE force field. The glass transition temperature (Tg) appears consistently across all measured properties. Furthermore, the divergence between heating and cooling behaviors consistently peaks at Tg, indicating a systematic hysteresis.
Interestingly, starting from low temperatures, polymer chains primarily remain in a potential well as temperature increases. In contrast, during cooling, the chains continue to explore configuration space until no torsional changes are observed, marking the end of configurational evolution.
Read the full article:https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mats.202300008
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