Tuesday,
March 29, 2016
11:00 am
Room 1315
Chemistry Building
The glass transition of polymers
in confined geometries
Professor James Forrest
Department of Physics & Astronomy
University of Waterloo,
Host: Mark Ediger
For over 20 years now, there has been significant interest on the properties of highly confined glass formers. In particular, measurements of the glass transition temperature (Tg) and related dynamics have sometimes shown significant differences from the properties of bulk materials. In this talk we will review the literature, and describe a simple physical picture that allows one to describe the measurements of apparently reduced Tg values in both thin films, and nano spheres. We will then introduce a simple free volume model for dynamics in glass forming materials where the importance of dynamical length scale is explicitly derived. That model is found to provide an excellent description of bulk and confined glass formers.. Refreshments will be available prior to the seminar at 10:45 a.m. outside room 1315
Graduate Students can meet with the speaker in Room 8305F at 1:00 pm