Polymer membranes comprising slide-ring gels with movable cross-links exhibit a nonlinear pressure-dependence in the fluidic flow rate. The proportional constant between the flow rate and pressure significantly changes at a critical pressure. The slide-ring gels are promising polymer membrane materials, which would allow for the on-off control of fluid permeability using an imposed pressure.
Stretching-induced swelling is investigated for polyrotaxane (PR)-based slide-ring gels with movable cross-links. The osmotic Poisson's ratio (μ os ), which is a measure of strain-induced swelling, is examined as a function of imposed stretching (R x ) for three types of PR gels with various degrees of the mobility of sliderings. Classical gels with topologically fixed cross-links and PR gels with constrained slide-rings exhibit R x -independent μ os . In contrast, PR gels with highly mobile slide-rings exhibit R x -dependent μ os . The μ os increases with R x in the case of moderate stretching (R x < 1.5), whereas it levels off in the case of high stretching (R x > 1.5). An increase in μ os with elongation results from the molecular pulley effect of slide-rings that homogenizes the structure of deformed networks. The pulley effect suppresses the stretching-induced swelling that originates from an entropic force to reduce the configurational anisotropy of the deformed networks.
Transistors have been miniaturized to increase their integration. With miniaturization, the thickness of the patterning material, called a resist, has been decreased to prevent them from collapsing. In this study, the resist thickness dependence of the pattern formation of chemically amplified electron beam resists was investigated. The line width roughness (LWR) of resist patterns increased with the decrease of initial resist film thickness. It was found that the dissolution kinetics depended on the initial resist film thickness. The escape of low-energy electrons to the substrates is considered to have resulted in the difference in the dissolution kinetics and LWR.
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