The highly ordered state of glassy polymers from quenching

Controlling the degree of structural order in polymers have been issue of interest in polymer science and industry in that it widely influences optical, electrical, and mechanical properties. Highly-ordered structures of polymers, in general, has been obtained by controlling processing temperature but it costs significant time and energy. In this study, glassy polymers such as poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) were successfully textured by quenching process. The mixture of Polymer/volatile cryatallizable additive (VCA) was molten and quenched. Large birefringence was observed by polarized optical microscopy and ellipsometry. First order transition and superheating effect were observed by differential scanning calorimetry. Melting temperature was 502 K for syndiotactic-PMMA. Strong in-plane diffraction patterns from grazing incident X-ray diffraction study also supports textured feature. Preparation of well-ordered and closely packed, stretched PMMA chains from quenching have not yet been reported. Interestingly molecular dynamics simulation showed stretched polymer chains in melt with VCA. The stretched chains were quickly trapped in ordered state.