Understanding the Role of Self-Poisoning in Polymer Crystallisation

About the Project

The polymer crystallisation process is critical not only to the manufacturing of many thermoplastics in determining their mechanical and other physical properties, but also their mechanical recycling where degradation of properties is currently a major issue. Recent technical advances have enabled us to gather information about the polymer crystallisation process in previously unattainable detail.

Such recent experimental advances have shown that “self-poisoning”, where the growth of polymer crystals is slowed down, not by impurities but by polymer molecules themselves having the wrong conformations or crystallising in a competing crystal polymorph, is a much broader phenomenon. A completely new kinetic framework of polymer crystal growth is therefore required, that would reproduce quantitatively experimental data in different polymeric systems with different self-poisoning mechanisms, that classical theories were unable to handle.

In the project you will be trained by the experts in the field on the most advanced materials characterisation methods to study the “self-poisoning” phenomenon in different polymer systems, to provide more solid and quantitative base of experimental data for the development of the new theory. Such methods include (but not limited to) optical tomography for 3D imaging of the polymer crystallisation process, high-resolution, real-time Atomic Force Microscopy for monitoring polymer growth with nanometer scale resolutions, in-situ and post-mortem Small and Wide Angle X-ray Diffraction for the quantitative identification of different phases and their transitions, and Flash Scanning Calorimetry where heat exchange during heating and cooling processes with rates up to 1000K/s can be precisely measured.

As a PhD student your work will be focused on the experimental part of the project, while working with a PDRA who will focus on the theoretical part. It is critical that you should maintain a keen interest in the theoretical part of the project, and you are expected to have regular communications and discussions with others involved in the project in order that the two parts are running in tandem.

Required qualifications:

An undergraduate degree from a relevant discipline, materials, physics or chemistry.

If English is not your first language then you must have an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) average of 6.5 or above with at least 6.0 in each component, or equivalent. Please see this link for further information: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/postgraduate/phd/apply/english-language.

How to apply:

Please see this link for information on how to apply: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/cbe/postgraduate/phd/how-apply. Please include the name of your proposed supervisor and the title of the PhD project within your application.

Funding Notes

This project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust for 4 years. Student fees: £5,006 per annum, stipend: £20,780 per annum.