Tag Archives: polymer physics

The concept of polymer physics is blurred

Vicki Cleave arranged a virtual issue of the Journal of Polymer Science, Part B: Polymer Physics on Materials View website. All articles in this issue are selected from other journals on Wiley InterScience, in order to demonstrate how wide and interesting the content of modern polymer physics research can be.

The increase of impact factor of J. Polym. Sci., Part B has been lagging behind its sister Part A. 10 years ago, the two journals have close IFs, 1.7 for Part A and 1.2 for Part B. Their 2008 records become 3.8 and 1.5, respectively. Somewhat coincidently, RSC launched a new journal Polymer Chemistry this year, wherears there has been no new journal for polymer physics. These are some loose evidence of the declining of polymer physics research I have long felt about.

SCImago Journal & Country RankSCImago Journal & Country Rank

However, the virtual issue of Part B tried to tell us there were still high impact polymer physic research that happened to appear on other journals. It now suggests what are also research of polymer physics welcomes future submission from these fields. These areas of research, as indicated by the virtual issue, are:

  • Biopolymers
  • Photo-, electro- and/or magneto-active polymers and their devices
  • Block copolymers (new only if they contain metals or are present on interfaces)

However, what physics is being extracted from these research areas? What problems of physics are still unanswered? And what models are proposed? Is there something similar to mean-field theory by P. Flory or the scaling theory by de Gennes going on? Or at least something similar to what Rouse & Zimm and Doi & Edward did?

The research on biopolymers can now follow a physic aspect only because the research of physics itself is penetrating biology. Little or no that was originally old polymer physics is applicable to biopolymers.

Photo-, electro- and/or magneto-active polymers are interesting because they are promising of soft devices. But ironically the design of them suffers much from their softness, which involves structural and dynamic heterogeniety at multiple timescale as well as nonequilibrium nature.

Block copolymer once attracted physicists after the control of polymer archetacture became easy thanks to controlled polymerization techniques such as ATRP and RAFT. However, now the research is largely simulations rather than theories.

So if Part B considers accepting papers of these research, it can boost its IF to some extent, but the cost is further blurring the concept of “polymer physics”.

非晶态相变

最近一个月几乎都没有更新博客，主要把精力花在研读colloidal glass的论文里了。我本来是学高分子的，然后为了研究课题，加强了高分子物理学习，加强了流变学的学习，现在，体系换成了粘土，完全进入colloid的领域，又不得不加强学习。

前段时间我导师去长春开的那个会，我导师打趣说：一群鸟人，开个鸟会，建个鸟巢，生个鸟蛋。前段时间，网上已经看到了那个会议的鸟蛋了。

“高分子物理没什么可搞”的感觉，是当一个人在想“高分子物理还能搞什么”的时候很自然会产生的感觉。Generally speaking，每当一个人要故意思考“创新点”，都会陷入“无新可创”的感觉中。本来创新不是这样想出来的，这个道理我导师比我懂。“现在的一个悖论就是要求顺民有创新性”，我导师说。

“鸟蛋”里说，

与会专家分析了当今高分子物理科学研究的趋势和现状，认为随着高分子科学和新兴学科的发展，目前高分子物理研究正呈现“非”（非平衡态、非线性、非均匀性）、“多”（多组分、多分散、多尺度以及多元相互作用）和新颖性及交叉学科（纳米、组装、功能和生物）等特点。阐述了目前高分子物理方面的研究现状和困境，认为许多难题（如：玻璃化、结晶等），由于难度大，目前的研究工作还停留在对已有理论的修补或完善，并无突破性进展；而部分新兴的热门科学问题（如：组装及生物相关的高分子物理问题等）的研究还停留在表象，缺乏物理深度，未真正涉及深层次本质问题。

“鸟蛋”还提到：

与会专家对当今高分子物理中的重要科学问题和前沿问题，从实验、理论和计算机模拟角度进行了详细的分析和讨论，一致认为：高分子非晶液-固转变（包括：胶体玻璃化转变、高分子玻璃化转变、物理凝胶化转变等）是目前高分子物理研究领域最关键、最具有挑战性的前沿科学问题，这就是为什么玻璃化转变成为《Science》期刊提出目前亟待解决的125个重要的科学难题之一……

根据我导师透露，这个《Science》之所以蹦出来是因为在会上恰好连续几个人的演讲都提到了《Science》这篇文章，引起了大家的兴趣。玻璃化转变的确近几年经常上Science，主要是因为发现了colloidal体系很像Glass或者就是Glass于是原来很难研究的molecular glass现在可以通过研究colloidal Glass来类比，贡献于了一个更广义的glass的认识，总之就是glass，glass，glass！现在大家不喜欢crystallization了，喜欢glass transition。但又自觉不自觉地希望glass transtition是phase transition。我导师说“序参量是什么都没搞清楚怎么会有相变呢”。于是在我看的论文里面，用得更多的词是nonergodic transition。无非大家的兴趣就是在那种既不是液体又不是固体的东西，除了nonergodic，没有别的词能概括了。

据闻这个鸟蛋是要准备生出一个973的……如果这个属于造谣，我就等着我导师跨房追捕哈。