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Now showing 1 - 10 of 17
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    Influence of microwave plasma treatment on the surface properties of carbon fibers and their adhesion in a polypropylene matrix
    (London [u.a.] : Institute of Physics, 2016) Scheffler, C.; Wölfel, E.; Förster, T.; Poitzsch, C.; Kotte, L.; Mäder, G.; Madsen, Bo; Biel, A.; Kusano, Y.; Lilholt, H.; Mikkelsen, L.P.; Mishnaevsky Jr., L.; Sørensen, B.F.
    A commercially available carbon fiber (CF) with an epoxy-based sizing (EP-sized CF) and an unsized CF have been plasma treated to study the effect on the fiber-matrix adhesion towards a polypropylene matrix. The EP-sized fiber was chosen because of its predictable low adhesion in a polypropylene (PP) matrix. The fibers have been modified using a microwave low-pressure O2/CO2/N2-gas plasma source (Cyrannus®) developed at IWS in a batch process. One aim of this study was the evaluation of parameters using high energies and short time periods in the plasma chamber to see the effect on mechanical performance of CF. These results will be the fundamental work for a planned continuous plasma modification line. The CF surface was characterized by determining the surface energies, single fiber tensile strength and XPS analysis. The adhesion behavior before and after plasma treatment was studied by single fiber pull-out test (SFPO) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). It was shown that the CO2- and O2-plasma increases the number of functional groups on the fiber surface during short time plasma treatment of 30 s. Carboxylic groups on the unsized CF surface resulting from O2-plasma treatment lead to an enhanced fiber-matrix adhesion, whereas the fiber strength was merely reduced.
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    Surface, interphase and tensile properties of unsized, sized and heat treated basalt fibres
    (London [u.a.] : Institute of Physics, 2016) Förster, T.; Sommer, G.S.; Mäder, E.; Scheffler, C.
    Recycling of fibre reinforced polymers is in the focus of several investigations. Chemical and thermal treatments of composites are the common ways to separate the reinforcing fibres from the polymer matrices. However, most sizings on glass and basalt fibre are not designed to resist high temperatures. Hence, a heat treatment might also lead to a sizing removal, a decrease of mechanical performance and deterioration in fibre-matrix adhesion. Different basalt fibres were investigated using surface analysis methods as well as single fibre tensile tests and single fibre pull-out tests in order to reveal the possible causes of these issues. Heat treatment in air reduced the fibre tensile strength in the same level like heat treatment in nitrogen atmosphere, but it influenced the wetting capability. Re-sizing by a coupling agent slightly increased the adhesion strength and reflected a decreased post-debonding friction.
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    Self-Hydrophobization in a Dynamic Hydrogel for Creating Nonspecific Repeatable Underwater Adhesion
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH Verlag, 2020) Han, L.; Wang, M.; Prieto-López, L.O.; Deng, X.; Cui, J.
    Adhesive hydrogels are widely applied for biological and medical purposes; however, they are generally unable to adhere to tissues under wet/underwater conditions. Herein, described is a class of novel dynamic hydrogels that shows repeatable and long-term stable underwater adhesion to various substrates including wet biological tissues. The hydrogels have Fe3+-induced hydrophobic surfaces, which are dynamic and can undergo a self-hydrophobization process to achieve strong underwater adhesion to a diverse range of dried/wet substrates without the need for additional processes or reagents. It is also demonstrated that the hydrogels can directly adhere to biological tissues in the presence of under sweat, blood, or body fluid exposure, and that the adhesion is compatible with in vivo dynamic movements. This study provides a novel strategy for fabricating underwater adhesive hydrogels for many applications, such as soft robots, wearable devices, tissue adhesives, and wound dressings.
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    An efficient two-polymer binder for high-performance silicon nanoparticle-based lithium-ion batteries: A systematic case study with commercial polyacrylic acid and polyvinyl butyral polymers
    (Pennington, NJ : Electrochemical Society Inc., 2019) Urbanski, A.; Omar, A.; Guo, J.; Janke, A.; Reuter, U.; Malanin, M.; Schmidt, F.; Jehnichen, D.; Holzschuh, M.; Simon, F.; Eichhorn, K.-J.; Giebeler, L.; Uhlmann, P.
    Silicon is one of the most promising anode materials for high energy density lithium ion batteries (LIBs) due to its high theoretical capacity and natural abundance. Unfortunately, significant challenges arise due to the large volume change of silicon upon lithiation/delithiation which inhibit its broad commercialization. An advanced binder can, in principle, reversibly buffer the volume change, and maintain strong adhesion toward various components as well as the current collector. In this work, we present the first report on the applicability of polyvinyl butyral (PVB) polymer as a binder component for silicon nanoparticles-based LIBs. Characteristic binder properties of commercial PVB and polyacrylic acid (PAA) polymers are compared. The work focuses on polymer mixtures of PVB polymers with PAA, for an improved binder composition which incorporates their individual advantages. Different ratios of polymers are systematically studied to understand the effect of particular polymer chains, functional groups and mass fractions, on the electrochemical performance. We demonstrate a high-performance polymer mixture which exhibits good binder-particle interaction and strong adhesion to Cu-foil. PAA/PVB-based electrode with a Si loading of ∼1 mg/cm2 tested between 0.01 and 1.2 V vs. Li/Li+ demonstrate specific capacities as high as 2170 mAh/g after the first hundred cycles. © The Author(s) 2019.
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    On the afferrante-carbone theory of ultratough tape peeling
    (Niš : Univ., 2023) Ciavarella, Michele; McMeeking, Robert M.; Cricrì, Gabriele
    In a simple and interesting theory of ultratough peeling of an elastic tape from a viscoelastic substrate, Afferrante and Carbone find that there are conditions for which the load for steady state peeling could be arbitrarily large in steady state peeling, at low angles of peeling-what they call "ultratough" peeling (Afferrante, L., Carbone, G., 2016, The ultratough peeling of elastic tapes from viscoelastic substrates, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 96, pp.223-234). Surprisingly, this seems to lead to toughness enhancement higher than the limit value observed in a very large crack in an infinite viscoelastic body, possibly even considering a limit on the stress transmitted. The Afferrante-Carbone theory seems to be a quite approximate, qualitative theory and many aspects and features of this "ultratough" peeling (e.g. conformity with the Rivlin result at low peel angles) are obtained also through other mechanisms (Begley, M.R., Collino, R.R., Israelachvili, J.N., McMeeking, R.M., 2013, Peeling of a tape with large deformations and frictional sliding, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 61(5), pp. 1265-1279) although not at “critical velocities”. Experimental and/or numerical verification would be most useful.
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    Adhesion of a cylindrical punch with elastic properties that vary radially
    (Amsterdam [u.a.] : Elsevier, 2023) Kossa, Attila; Hensel, René; McMeeking, Robert M.
    The adhesion of a rigid substrate and an adhered straight cylindrical punch with a non-homogeneous elastic modulus is analyzed. The stress distributions are obtained along the interface for various elastic modulus gradients. The calculations are performed in the commercial finite element software Abaqus using a user material (UMAT) subroutine to control the dependence of Young's modulus on the radial position. The UMAT code is shared in the paper. The results reveal that the decreasing elastic modulus toward the perimeter of the punch can be used to significantly reduce the normal stress magnitudes in the singularity domain, which leads to stronger adhesion. The increase in the adhesion strength is characterized numerically. The effect of Poisson's ratio is also analyzed.
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    Tailored polyurethane acrylate blend for large-scale and high-performance micropatterned dry adhesives
    (Dordrecht [u.a.] : Springer Science + Business Media B.V, 2019) Yu, Dan; Hensel, René; Beckelmann, Dirk; Opsölder, Michael; Schäfer, Bruno; Moh, Karsten; de Oliveira, Peter William; Arzt, Eduard
    Continuous roll-to-roll fabrication is essential for transferring the idea of bio-inspired, fibrillar dry adhesives into large-scale, synthetic, high-performance adhesive tapes. Toward this aim, we investigated process parameters that allow us to control the morphology and the resulting adhesion of mushroom-shaped micropatterned surfaces. Flexible silicone templates enabled the replication process of the polyurethane acrylate pre-polymer involving UV-light-induced cross-linking. For this paper, we particularly tailored the polyurethane acrylate pre-polymer by adding chemical components to tune UV curing kinetics and to reduce oxygen inhibition of radicals. We found that higher intensities of the UV light and faster reaction kinetics improved the quality of the microstructures, i.e., a larger cap diameter of the mushroom tips was achieved. The polymer blend U6E4 exhibited the fastest curing kinetics, which resulted in a micromorphology similar to that of the Ni-shim master structures. Best adhesion results were obtained for adhesive tapes made from U6E4 with 116 kPa pull-off stress, 1.4 N cm−1 peel strength and 71 kPa shear strength. In addition, repeated attachment–detachment tests over 100,000 cycles demonstrated strong robustness and reusability.
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    Improved Adhesion of the DLC Coating Using HiPIMS with Positive Pulses and Plasma Immersion Pretreatment
    (Basel : MDPI, 2021) Gómez, Iñigo; Claver, Adrián; Santiago, José Antonio; Fernandez, Iván; Palacio, Jose Fernandez; Diaz, Cristina; Mändl, Stephan; Garcia, Jose Antonio
    Diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings are used due to their extraordinary tribomechanical properties, great hardness, high elastic modulus, high wear resistance, low friction coefficient and chemical inertness, which provide them with biocompatibility. Compared to other physical vapor deposition (PVD) coatings of transition nitrides and carbonitrides, DLC has limited adhesion, so it is necessary to develop new techniques to overcome this limitation. This work reports the results of scratch testing for the measurement of adhesion and of tests for wear resistance and nanoindentation in AISI 316L stainless steel coated with a WC:C coating, produced using novel high-power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) technology with positive pulses. In addition, the use of a preceding surface modification technique, specifically plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII), was studied with the aim of optimizing the adhesion of the coating. The results show how the coating improved the tribomechanical properties through the use of positive pulse HiPIMS compared to conventional HiPIMS, with an adhesion result that reached critical load values of 48.5 N and a wear coefficient of 3.96 × 10−7 mm3/nm
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    Selective Grafting of Polyamines to Polyether Ether Ketone Surface during Molding and Its Use for Chemical Plating
    (Basel : MDPI, 2018) Nagel, Jürgen; Zimmermann, Philipp; Schwarz, Simona; Schlenstedt, Kornelia
    We present a new approach of surface functionalization of polyether ether ketone (PEEK) that is carried out during the molding step. Thin films of polymers with different functional groups were applied to the surface of a mold and brought in close contact with a PEEK melt during injection molding. The surfaces of the produced parts were characterized after solidification. Only those PEEK surfaces that were in contact with polymers bearing primary amino groups exhibited a wettability for water. Obviously, the thin polymer film was grafted to the surface by a chemical reaction initiated by the high melt temperature. The formation of azomethine bonds between PEEK and the polyamine by coupling to the ketone groups was proposed. The other amino groups in the molecule were still in function after the molding process. They adsorbed different anionic molecules and anionic charged nanoparticles from aqueous solutions. The surfaces could be chemically plated by copper and nickel with high adhesion.
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    Vimentin intermediate filament rings deform the nucleus during the first steps of adhesion
    (Lausanne : Frontiers Media, 2019) Terriac, E.; Schütz, S.; Lautenschläger, F.
    During cell spreading, cells undergo many changes to their architecture and their mechanical properties. Vimentin, as an integral part of the cell architecture, and its mechanical stability must adapt to the new state of the cell. This study focuses on the structures formed by vimentin during the first steps of cell adhesion. Very early, ball-like structures, or “knots,” are seen and often vimentin filaments emerge in the shape of rings around the nucleus. Although intermediate filaments are not known to be associated to motor proteins to form contractile systems, these rings can nonetheless strongly deform the cell nucleus. In the first 6 to 12 h of adhesion, these vimentin knots and rings disappear, and the intermediate filament network returns to the state seen before detachment of the cells. As these vimentin structures are very transient in the early steps of cell spreading, they have rarely been described in the literature. However, they can also be seen during mitosis, which is an event that involves partial detachment and re-spreading of the cells. Interestingly, the turnover dynamics of vimentin are reduced in both the knots and rings, compared to vimentin in the lamellipodia. It remains to define how the force is transmitted from the ball-like structures to the rings, and to measure the impact of such strong nuclear deformation on gene expression during cell re-spreading and the rearrangement of the vimentin network. Copyright © 2019 Terriac, Schütz and Lautenschläger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.