Prof. Koga, T (Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stony Brook University)
Environmentally friendly and low-temperature process for polymeric nanomaterials using supercritical carbon dioxide (ĶÎ׳¦Æó»À²½ÃºÁǤò»È¤Ã¤¿¿·µ¬¥Ê¥Î¹âʬ»ÒÁǺà¤ÎÁÏÀ½)
Supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) is being used increasingly as an environmentally friendly solvent for polymer processing. However, the major disadvantage thus far is that only a limited class of polymers, such as fluorinated or silicone-based polymers, can be dissolved in scCO2. In this talk, firstly, I will show the experimental evidence of the anomalous absorption of the solvent molecules in polymer thin films in the large compressible region of scCO2 near the critical point (Tc=31.3¡ëC and Pc =7.38MPa). It is found that the anomalous absorption occurs regardless of the solvent-polymer interactions and can be scaled with the magnitude of the long-range density fluctuations in supercritical fluids used in the study. Secondly, I will show advances in the use of the ?density fluctuating? scCO2 as a versatile, green and low-temperature operational solvent for creating novel polymeric nanomaterials (nanocomposites, blockpolymers, semi-crystalline polymer thin films), allowing control over the morphologies and various phenomena.
This work is supported by NSF-CARRER Grant (No. CMMI-0846267).