title: Role of branching architecture on the glass transition of hyperbranched polyethers.
abstract: The influence of branching architecture on the glass transition of hyperbranched polyethers has been investigated. For amorphous samples, the glass transition temperature (T(g)) first increases with the degree of branching (DB), passes through a maximum, and then decreases sharply. An attempt is made to explain this by the competition between the junction density and the free volume of terminal units. For the crystalline samples, the crystallization of polymer chains makes the relationship of DB and T(g) more complicated. By the introduction of branching architecture, the crystallization ability of the branched polymer is weakened gradually. When the samples are isothermally crystallized for a long time, the T(g) of polyethers decreases monotonically with DB.
authors.affiliation: School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Jieli
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Chunlai
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tu
authors.forename: Yunfeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Ruibin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xinyuan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Deyue
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yan