% IMPORTANT: The following is UTF-8 encoded. This means that in the presence
% of non-ASCII characters, it will not work with BibTeX 0.99 or older.
% Instead, you should use an up-to-date BibTeX implementation like “bibtex8” or
% “biber”.
@ARTICLE{Habicht:278747,
author = {Habicht, Axel and Schmolke, Willi and Goerigk, Günter and
Lange, Frank and Saalwächter, Kay and Ballauff, Matthias
and Seiffert, Sebastian},
title = {{C}ritical fluctuations and static inhomogeneities in
polymer gel volume phase transitions},
journal = {Journal of polymer science / B},
volume = {53},
number = {16},
issn = {0887-6266},
address = {Bognor Regis [u.a.]},
publisher = {Wiley},
reportid = {FZJ-2015-07014},
pages = {1112 - 1122},
year = {2015},
abstract = {Thermoresponsive polymer gels exhibit pronounced swelling
and deswelling upon changes in temperature, accompanied by
dynamic concentration fluctuations that have been
interpreted as critical opalescence. These fluctuations span
lengthscales similar to that of static structures in the
gels, such as the gel polymer-network meshsize (1–10 nm)
and static polymer-network crosslinking inhomogeneities
(10–1000 nm). To systematically investigate this overlay,
we use droplet-based microfluidics and fabricate
submillimeter-sized gel particles with varying static
heterogeneity, as revealed on a molecular scale by proton
NMR. When these microgels are probed by small-angle neutron
scattering, the detection of dynamic fluctuations during the
volume phase transitions is strongly perturbed by the
co-existing static inhomogeneity. Depending of the type of
data analysis employed, the temperature-dependent evolution
of the correlation length associated to the dynamic
fluctuations does or does not agree with predictions by the
critical scaling theory. Only the most homogeneous sample of
this study, prepared by controlled polymer crosslinking in
droplet microfluidics, shows a diverging correlation length
in agreement to the critical scaling theory independent of
the specific approach of data analysis. These findings
suggest that care must be taken about polymer-network
heterogeneity when gel volume phase transitions are
evaluated as critical phenomena.},
cin = {JCNS (München) ; Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS
(München) ; JCNS-FRM-II},
ddc = {530},
cid = {I:(DE-Juel1)JCNS-FRM-II-20110218},
pnm = {6G15 - FRM II / MLZ (POF3-6G15) / 6G4 - Jülich Centre for
Neutron Research (JCNS) (POF3-623)},
pid = {G:(DE-HGF)POF3-6G15 / G:(DE-HGF)POF3-6G4},
experiment = {EXP:(DE-MLZ)KWS3-20140101},
typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)16},
UT = {WOS:000357287100003},
doi = {10.1002/polb.23743},
url = {https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/278747},
}