Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Jonathan Kien-Kwok Tong

Gang Paul Chen

Hadi Ghasemi

James Loomis

Xiaopeng Huang

Yanfei Xu

Bolin Liao

Brian Burg

Jianjian Wang

Wei-Chun Hsu

Process for continuous fabrication of highly aligned polymer films. A polymer-solvent solution is subjected to a high shear, high temperature, Couette flow to extrude a thin film having polymer chain disentanglement. The extruded thin film is frozen and the solvent is allowed to evaporate to form a dried film. The dried film is mechanically drawn using a constant force, adaptive-thickness drawing system to align polymer molecular chains through plastic deformation. A suitable polymer is ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene.

Continuous fabrication system and method for highly aligned polymer films

A system for measuring the absorption spectrum of a sample is provided that includes a broadband light source that produces broadband light defined within a range of an absorptance spectrum. An interferometer modulates the intensity of the broadband light source for a range of modulation frequencies. A bi-layer cantilever probe arm is thermally connected to a sample arm having at most two layers of materials. The broadband light modulated by the interferometer is directed towards the sample and absorbed by the sample and converted into heat, which causes a temperature rise and bending of the bi-layer cantilever probe arm. A detector mechanism measures and records the deflection of the probe arm so as to obtain the absorptance spectrum of the sample.

Direct and quantitative broadband absorptance spectroscopy with multilayer cantilever probes

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Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Jonathan Kien-Kwok Tong