TY - JOUR
T1 - Inside the Ionic Aggregates Constrained by Covalently Attached Polymer Chain Segments
T2 - Order or Disorder?
AU - Yu, Zixin
AU - Wang, Jie
AU - Hu, Zhen
AU - Hu, Chuanqun
AU - Ding, Dachuan
AU - Yang, Bin
AU - Hu, Tao
AU - Gong, Xinghou
AU - Wu, Chonggang
AU - Hara, Masanori
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Select Overseas Chinese Scholars Science and Technology Activities Foundation of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of China ([2013]277), as well as by the Natural Science Foundation of the Hubei Province of China (2014CFA094), the Overseas High-level Talents Scientific-research Starting Fund of Hubei University of Technology, China (HBUT-science-[2005]2), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51703053).
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2019 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2019/6/20
Y1 - 2019/6/20
N2 - When a small-molecule ionic crystal is group-substituted with polymer chain-segments to form an ionomer, do its constrained ionic aggregates maintain ordered internal structures? This work presents, for a Na-salt sulfonated-polystyrene ionomer, reconciled TEM electron-diffraction schlieren textures and WAXS Bragg-type reflections from the ionic-aggregate nanodomains, which solidly prove the aggregates' internal (mono)crystalline order. The observed DSC endotherm of the ionomer, identified by WAXS as an order-disorder transition interior to its aggregates, gradually becomes enhanced over a 3-month, room-temperature physical aging process, indicating that the aggregates' ordering is a slow relaxation process in which the degree of order increases with time. This work corroborates an uncommon form of order, i.e., polymer-bound small-molecule ionic (quasi)crystal, which is supplementary to the order phenomena in small molecules, polymers, and liquid crystals.
AB - When a small-molecule ionic crystal is group-substituted with polymer chain-segments to form an ionomer, do its constrained ionic aggregates maintain ordered internal structures? This work presents, for a Na-salt sulfonated-polystyrene ionomer, reconciled TEM electron-diffraction schlieren textures and WAXS Bragg-type reflections from the ionic-aggregate nanodomains, which solidly prove the aggregates' internal (mono)crystalline order. The observed DSC endotherm of the ionomer, identified by WAXS as an order-disorder transition interior to its aggregates, gradually becomes enhanced over a 3-month, room-temperature physical aging process, indicating that the aggregates' ordering is a slow relaxation process in which the degree of order increases with time. This work corroborates an uncommon form of order, i.e., polymer-bound small-molecule ionic (quasi)crystal, which is supplementary to the order phenomena in small molecules, polymers, and liquid crystals.
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U2 - 10.1021/acsmacrolett.9b00296
DO - 10.1021/acsmacrolett.9b00296
M3 - Article
C2 - 35619506
AN - SCOPUS:85069849315
SN - 2161-1653
VL - 8
SP - 841
EP - 845
JO - ACS Macro Letters
JF - ACS Macro Letters
IS - 7
ER -