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Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 124 - 127 (1998)

Clear Evidence of Reptation in Polyethylene from Neutron Spin-Echo Spectroscopy

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P. Schleger, B. Farago, and C. Lartigue *
Institut Laue-Langevin, BP 156, 38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France

A. Kollmar and D. Richter
Institut für Festkörperforschung, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52428 Jülich, Germany

Received 27 January 1998

The dynamic structure factor S(q,t) of polyethylene (PEB-2) was measured by neutron spin echo in the Fourier time range of t  =  0.3–175 nsec and for momentum transfers q between 0.05 and 0.145 Å-1 to test the validity of competing phenomenological theories of relaxation in polymer melts. Previous spin-echo experiments limited to t<25 nsec were equally well described by a variety of models. This ambiguity has now been lifted, and the experiment clearly favors the reptation model, showing that the dominant relaxation mechanism in entangled linear polymers is via reptation.


©1998 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.124
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.124
PACS: 61.25.Hq, 61.12.-q, 83.20.Fk

* Present address: Laboratoire de Spectrométrie Physique, BP 87, 38402 St. Martin d'Heres Cedex, France.

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