Inverse Rheological Methods for the Determination of Polymer Structures, Diffusion of Small Molecules and Nanofiber Lengths

This paper presents so-called inverse rheology methods to determine various parameters that are essential to go further in terms of modelling and/or simulation in the field of polymer processing. The following systems from our previous works are presented: i) Determination of the molecular structure of a poly(epsilon-caprolactone) polymerized in-situ by ring-opening; ii) Measurement of the mutual diffusion coefficient: two cases are considered, namely the diffusion of a plasticizer and the diffusion of an organic peroxide in a polymer melt and iii) Determination of the average length of polymer nanofibers in suspension and study of the universal behavior of nanofibers of different natures in dilute and semi-dilute suspensions. The application of these different studies in the field of reactive extrusion, blending and multi-scale structuring are presented and discussed.