Miscibility of Non-Uniform Aliphatic Polyamide Mixtures.

Mixing different aliphatic polyamides provides opportunities to tune and optimize the properties of these semicrystalline polycondensates. Combining experiment and theory, we predict and explain the miscibility of aliphatic polyamide mixtures. Visual inspection and Raman spectroscopy of polyamide mixtures show that liquid/liquid phase demixing occurs in the melt due to limited miscibility.

Time-resolved investigation of mesoporous silica microsphere formation using in situ heating optical microscopy.

A fundamental understanding of the drying behavior of droplets containing solids or solutes is important for various industrial applications. However, droplets are typically highly polydisperse and time-resolved imaging data of the process dynamics are often lacking, which makes it difficult to interpret the effects of different drying parameters. Here, the controlled drying of monodisperse emulsion droplets containing colloidal silica nanoparticles and their subsequent assembly into mesoporous silica microspheres (MSMs) is investigated using an optical microscope outfitted with a heating and vacuum stage.