Glass Transition Temperature of Polymer Films That Slip

When a polymer is modified so that its glass transition temperature, T g, is decreased (increased) from the inherent value, its dynamics is often supposed to be enhanced (suppressed). For polymer films, there is an ongoing debate about whether a change in T g upon changing the film thickness is accompanied by a correlated change in the dynamics of the films. In this experiment, we measure the T g of polystyrene films coated on different substrates on which the films dewet with different degrees of slippage and, therefore, different rates of dewetting. Our result shows that there is no correlation between the T g and dewetting rate of the films.