Roughening up polymer microspheres and their diffusion in a liquid. Longbottom, B., W., Somuncuoglu, B., Punter, J., Longbottom, S., & Bon, S., A., F. Soft Matter, 13:4285-4293, 2017.
Roughening up polymer microspheres and their diffusion in a liquid [pdf]Paper  Roughening up polymer microspheres and their diffusion in a liquid [link]Website  doi  abstract   bibtex   6 downloads  
A simple, versatile approach for the roughening of polymer microparticle surfaces via a deformation technique in the presence of an inorganic matrix is presented here. The process consists of straightforward steps: 1. Preparation of a bi-composite colloidal sol i.e. polymer particles + inorganic particles dispersed in a liquid, 2. Drying of the mixture onto a suitable hard substrate, 3. Heating the dried film above the glass transition temperature of the polymer, and 4. Re-dispersion and chemical etching of the inorganic medium. The primary driver is capillary imbibition of the polymer melt into the inorganic colloidal template. 2D particle tracking probes the diffusional behaviour of the roughened objects in comparison with their smooth precursors. We show that, despite large scale roughness (up to 10 % asperity size with respect to particle diameter), Stokes law is obeyed and the particles motion can be modelled simply with the Einstein-Stokes-Sutherland relation.

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