The structure and mechanical properties of injectionmolded polypropylene along the flow direction were investigated in this article. A remarkable difference was found in morphology and mechanical properties of the injection-molded parts along the flow direction. The three-layered structure (namely the skin, subskin, and core layer) showed a gradient distribution along the flow direction. The IR and WAXD results showed that the orientation of the subskin layer in the gate part is much higher than that in the far part. DSC analysis results indicated that the two parts (gate part and far part) of injection-molded bar has the same degree of crystallinity that should not be responsible for the mechanical difference of the two parts. According to the measurement of residual internal stress, there is large difference between the gate part and far part, which is the main reason leading to the difference of impact behavior. The annealing treatment eliminated the internal stress, so the mechanical difference between the two parts decreased and the fracture type of the far part changed from brittle to ductile. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 49:703-712, 2009. ª

In this work, Au nanoparticle (AuNP) arrays on shape memory polyurethane (SMPU) substrates serve as flexible materials for tunable localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). AuNP arrays prepared by diblock copolymer self-assembly are transferred from rigid silicon wafers onto flexible SMPU substrates with ultrasonic treatment rather than peeling off directly. The resultant AuNP array SMPU films have excellent mechanical properties and stable thermodynamic properties. The LSPR arising from AuNP arrays is increased by negative bending on SMPU substrates, whereas the LSPR is decreased by positive bending. Besides, upon uniaxial tension, the vertical LSPR is increased first then decreased, whereas the parallel LSPR is similar, resulting in the overall LSPR of AuNP arrays being increased first and then decreased with the mechanical uniaxial tension of SMPU. Moreover, the resultant AuNP array SMPU films exhibit excellent flexibility, stability, and homogeneity in practical surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) application. This approach of incorporating AuNP arrays on SMPU substrates for tuning plasmonic properties have great potential applications in SERS, fluorescence enhancement, and newly optoelectronic materials.

The effect of melt temperature, ultrasonic oscillations, and induced ultrasonic oscillations modes on weld line strength of polystyrene (PS) and polystyrene/polyethylene (PS/HDPE) (90/10) blend was investigated. The results show that the increase of melt temperature is beneficial to the increase of weld line strength of PS and PS/HDPE blend. Compared with PS, the increase of melt temperature can greatly enhance the strength of PS/HDPE blends. For PS, the presence of ultrasonic oscillations can enhance the weld line strength of PS at different melt temperatures. But for PS/HDPE blends, the presence of ultrasonic oscillations can improve the weld line strength when the melt temperature is 230°C, but when the melt temperature is 195°C, the induced ultrasonic oscillations hardly enhance the weld line strength. Compared with Mode I (ultrasonic oscillations were induced into the mold at the whole process of injection molding), the induced ultrasonic oscillations as Mode II (ultrasonic oscillations were induced into the mold after injection mold filling) is more effective at increasing the weld line strength of PS and PS/HDPE blends. The mechanism for ultrasonic improvement of weld line strength was also studied. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 45:1666 -1672, 2005.

The effect of ultrasonic oscillations and ultrasonic oscillation‐induced modes on weld line strength of polystyrene(PS) and polystyrene/polyethylene(PS/HDPE) blend was investigated. And the mechanism of ultrasonic improvement of weld line strength of PS and PS/HDPE blend was also studied. The presence of ultrasonic oscillations can enhance the weld line strength of PS and PS/HDPE blend. Compared with mode I(ultrasonic oscillations were induced into mold at the whole process of injection molding), the induced ultrasonic oscillations as mode II(ultrasonic oscillations were induced into mold after injection mold filling) is more effective to increase weld line strength of PS and PS/HDPE blend. The mechanism for ultrasonic improvement of weld line strength of PS and PS/HDPE blend is that the ultrasonic oscillations can improve the molecular diffusion across weld line of the melt at the core, and make against the fusion of melt at the skin. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 44: 1520–1530, 2006

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