This research examines the impact of internationalization on small and medium enterprise (SME) survival, and the direct and moderating effects of technology resources and research and development (R&D) alliances. Our survey examination of 1,612 Korean SMEs reveals that sales internationalization is associated with better survival prospects, suggesting that failure risk does not increase with cross-border sales. In addition, though technology resources provide no direct survival benefits, R&D intensity acts as a moderator in the internationalization-to-survival relationship. R&D alliances, on the other hand, are directly linked with survival but do not show a moderating effect. This supports the liabilities of newness and smallness view that external relationships can help counter survival threats but suggests that the accumulation of technology resources may be more important when firms seek international expansion.

We report the synthesis of a new hydrocarbon copolymer which is soluble in supercritical carbon dioxide. Poly(vinyl acetate-alt-dibutyl maleate) (PVAc-alt-PDBM) copolymer was synthesized by free-radical polymerization mediated by the RAFT technique. Liquid CO2 extraction was performed to remove the residual monomer and solvent from the final product. The solubility of the copolymers was measured in a variable volume view cell at temperatures between 25 and 75 °C. The phase behavior of the copolymer in CO2 was studied in terms of its molecular weight and concentration in the solvent. It was found that the copolymer shows good solubility in CO2 approaching that of perfluoropolyether (PFPE) and poly(dimethylsiloxane) monomethacrylate (PDMS-mMA).

It has been reported that the surface pressure–area isotherm of poly(d,l-lactic acid-ran-glycolic acid) (PLGA) at the air–water interface exhibits several interesting features: (1) a plateau at intermediate compression levels, (2) a sharp rise in surface pressure upon further compression, and (3) marked surface pressure–area hysteresis during compression–expansion cycles. To investigate the molecular origin of this behavior, we conducted an extensive set of surface pressure and AFM imaging measurements with PLGA materials having several different molecular weights and also a poly(d,l-lactic acid-ran-glycolic acid-ran-caprolactone) (PLGACL) material in which the caprolactone monomers were incorporated as a plasticizing component. The results suggest that (i) the plateau in the surface pressure–area isotherm of PLGA (or PLGACL) occurs because of the formation (and collapse) of a continuous monolayer of the polymer under continuous compression; (ii) the PLGA monolayer becomes significantly resistant to compression at high compression because under that condition the collapsed domains become large enough to become glassy (such behavior was not observed in the nonglassy PLGACL sample); and (iii) the isotherm hysteresis is due to a coarsening of the collapsed domains that occurs under high-compression conditions. We also investigated the monolayer properties of PEG-PLGA and PEG-PLGACL diblock copolymers. The results demonstrate that the tendency of PLGA (or PLGACL) to spread on water allows the polymer to be used as an anchoring block to form a smooth biodegradable monolayer of block copolymers at the air–water interface. These diblock copolymer monolayers exhibit protein resistance.

New CO2-philic hydrocarbon molecules were synthesized by reversible addition fragmentation chain-transfer polymerization. These poly(vinyl alkylates) show the highest solubility in supercritical CO2 of any hydrocarbon reported to date. By utilizing the anchoring ability of the thiocarbonylthio end group, the dispersion polymerization of N-vinyl pyrrolidone was successfully achieved in scCO2 leading to high yields of well-defined spherical polymer particles.