Nanoscale viscosity of confined polyethylene oxide

Abstract

Complex fluids near interfaces or confined within nanoscale volumes can exhibit substantial shifts in physical properties compared to bulk, including glass transition temperature, phase separation, and crystallization. Because studies of these effects typically use thin film samples with one dimension of confinement, it is generally unclear how more extreme spatial confinement may influence these properties. In this work, we used X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy and gold nanoprobes to characterize polyethylene oxide confined by nanostructured gratings.