Nanotetrapods promote polymer flow through confinement induced packing frustration

Jotypriya Sarkar, Sachin M. B. Gautham, Fariyad Ali, Mithun Madhusudanan, Harshit Yadav, Anindya Datta, Tarak K. Patra (), Sivasurender Chandran () and Mithun Chowdhury ()
Additional contact information
Jotypriya Sarkar: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Sachin M. B. Gautham: Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Fariyad Ali: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Mithun Madhusudanan: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Harshit Yadav: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Anindya Datta: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Tarak K. Patra: Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Sivasurender Chandran: Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Mithun Chowdhury: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Processing ultra-high molecular weight polymers presents significant experimental challenges due to their high viscosity, which requires elevated shear rates and consequently increases energy demands. Here, we explore the role of the geometry of nanoparticles- spheres, rods, and tetrapods - in controlling the effective viscosity of polymer nanocomposites. Intriguingly, our combined experiments and molecular dynamics simulations reveal a significant decrease in the viscosity of composites with tetrapod nanoparticles, without compromising mechanical or thermal integrity, unlike sphere and rod, which exhibit minimal impact on the viscosity at the same level of loading. We show that the inner curvatures of the nanotetrapods impose strong physical confinement introducing an entropic cost for polymers to access this space. The inaccessible volume creates polymer packing frustration around nanotetrapod surfaces, which, in turn, increases their mobility and decreases the overall viscosity of the composite. Nanotetrapods prove to be effective flow promoters while preserving good dispersion within a polymer melt, offering significant potential for advanced polymer processing applications.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63555-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-63555-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-63555-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().