Xue Chen

Xue Chen

	Contact Information
	Email	xuec@umich.edu
	Phone	734.936.1381
	Office	3420 G. G. Brown, Dept. of Chemical Engineering University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

	Education

	B.E.	Chemical Engineering Department,Tianjin University, China, 2006

	B.A.	School of Social Science and Foreign Languages,Tianjin University, China, 2006


Current Research

It has long been recognized that rheological measurements provide the most sensitive indicator of the presence of long-chain branching (LCB) in polymer melts, and that these long branches are of great importance in the processing behavior of polymers. Rapid advances in theoretical understanding of the linear and nonlinear viscoelasticity of entangled polymers have led to new models that can account for the effects of LCB on rheology. Recent molecular theories for long-chain-branched polymers are based on the well-known tube model for entangled polymers, in which relaxation occurs by a combination of reptation of linear chains along the tube, fluctuations of chain ends inside the tubes, and constraint release, whereby motions of surrounding chains release entanglements on the tube. In my research, I focus on the effects of LCB on rheology from experimental as well as computational views. The polymers are star-shaped, H-shaped polymers as well as commercial polymers.

Publications

[1] X. Chen and R. G. Larson, Macromolecules 6871:41-42, 2008 "Fluidic trapping of deformable polymers in microflows."