THE RELAXATION OF POLYMERS WITH LINEAR FLEXIBLE CHAINS OF UNIFORM LENGTH

The analysis of dynamic mechanical data indicates that linear flexible polymer chains of uniform length follow a scaling relation during their relaxation, having a linear viscoelastic relaxation spectrum of the form H(λ) = n1GN0 × (λ/λmax)n1 for λ≤λmax. Data are well represented with a scaling exponent of about 0.22 for polystyrene and 0.42 for polybutadiene. The plateau modulus GN0 is a material-specific constant and the longest relaxation time depends on the molecular weight in the expected way. At high frequencies, the scaling behavior is masked by the transition to the glassy response. Surprisingly, this transition seems to follow a Chambon-Winter spectrum H(λ) = Cλ-n2, which was previously adopted for describing other liquid/solid transitions. The analysis shows that the Rouse spectrum is most suitable for low molecular-weight polymers M ≈ Mc, and that the de Gennes-Doi-Edwards spectrum clearly predicts terminal relaxation, but deviates from the observed behavior in the plateau region. © 1990 Steinkopff.