Rong Minzhi

Design and synthesis of self-healing polymers

Self-healing polymers represent a class of materials with built-in capability of rehabilitating damages. The topic has attracted increasingly more attention in the past few years. The on-going research activities clearly indicate that self-healing polymeric materials turn out to be a typical multi-disciplinary area concerning polymer chemistry, organic synthesis, polymer physics, theoretical and experimental mechanics, processing, composites manufacturing, interfacial engineering, etc. The present article briefly reviews the achievements of the groups worldwide, and particularly the work carried out in our own laboratory towards strength recovery for structural applications. To ensure sufficient coverage, thermoplastics and thermosetting polymers, extrinsic and intrinsic self-healing, autonomic and non-autonomic healing approaches are included. Innovative routes that correlate materials chemistry to full capacity restoration are discussed for further development from bioinspired toward biomimetic repair.

Self-organization of CdS nanoparticles in polystyrene film

Self-organization of nano-CdS particles in polystyrene can be observed by encapsulating the particles with n-dodecyl mercaptan owing to a strong electron transfer interaction between the modified CdS nanoparticles and aliphatic carbons in polystyrene. Consequently, ultraviolet/visible absorption edge of the treated nano-CdS/polystyrene composites is further blueshifted in addition to the shift caused by the quantum size effect, and the fluorescence emission peak of the composite becomes redshifted and narrow.

Molecular Entanglement Analysis Based on the Damping Behavior of Polycarbonate/Epoxy Resin Semi-Interpenetrating Polymer Network

The characteristics of entanglement structure in polycarbonate/epoxy semi-interpenetrating polymer network at molecular level have been investigated by dynamic mechanical spectrum. It is found that the relaxation of entanglement chains is a kind of synergetic relaxation, which will induce additive internal friction and decrease the apparent activation energy and Tg. The loss areas can represent the degree of interpenetration between the different segments at molecular level.