Interferometric technique to determine dynamics of polymers under strong confinement

RAUL URTEAGA; CENCHA, LUISA G.; BERLI, CLAUDIO L. A.

Río de Janeiro

Workshop; VIII Workshop in Microfluidics; 2018

Nowadays, a major concern in soft matter is the understanding of the materials behavior in confined geometries. The interest on the subject is growing together with the microfabrication possibilities and with the huge range of applications arising from it. This work presents the basis of a new rheological characterization technique to study polymers under strong geometrical confinement in mesoporous silicon (PS) films. The method is based on sensing the changes of the optical properties of the porous matrix due to polymer imbibition into the pores. Furthermore, a simple theoretical model allows one to correlate the time dependent optical thickness measurements with the polymer rheological parameters as a function of temperature. The presented technique represents a simple method for the rheological study of polymers in confinement. Its high temporal resolution allows the study of very low molecular weight polymers or measure in a wide range of temperatures in a single experiment.