Presidential Young Investigator Award: Transport Phenomena and Fluid Flow of Polymeric and Colloidal Liquids

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This study aims at the development of an optical technique by which the individual components of polydisperse polymeric liquids can be studied during a flow process. The design of the experiment takes advantage of an optical arrangement which has recently been developed for the study of composite materials. By extending that instrument so that wavelengths in the infrared spectral regime can be used, the infra-red dichroism produced by polymer chains deformed during flow can be measured. Such a capability allows chains which are tagged with deuterium to be distinguished from untagged polymer chains. By studying bimodal mixtures of polymer chains in which one molecular weight fraction consists of tagged chains, the dynamics of both long and short chains can be determined independently. The results of these experiments are compared with recent molecular theories developed for such bimodal mixtures.