Investigation of spherical and concentric mechanism of compound droplets

Polymer shells with high sphericity and uniform wall thickness are always needed in the inertial confined fusion(ICF)experiments.Driven by the need to control the shape of water-in-oil(W1/O)compound droplets,the effects of the density matching level,the interfacial tension and the rotation speed of the continuing fluid field on the sphericity and wall thickness uniformity of the resulting polymer shells were investigated and the spherical and concentric mechanisms were also discussed.The centering of W1/O compound droplets,the location and movement of W1/O compound droplets in the external phase(W2)were significantly affected by the density matching level of the key stage and the rotation speed of the continuing fluid field.Therefore,by optimizing the density matching level and rotation speed,the batch yield of polystyrene(PS)shells with high sphericity and uniform wall thickness increased.Moreover,the sphericity also increased by raising the oil/water(O/W2)interfacial tension,which drove a droplet to be spherical.The experimental results show that the spherical driving force is from the interfacial tension affected by the two relative phases,while the concentric driving force,as a resultant force,is not only affected by the three phases,but also by the continuing fluid field.The understanding of spherical and concentric mechanism can provide some guidance for preparing polymer shells with high sphericity and uniform wall thickness.

Effect of molecular weight on the quality of poly(alpha-methylstyrene) mandrel

Hollow poly(alpha-methylstyrene)(PAMS)shows application in inertial confinement fusion experiments as the degradable mandrels of glow plasma polymer shells.However,the molecular weight of PAMS has great influence on the quality of mandrels.In this work,this influence was systematically studied using several PAMS samples with different molecular weights.For PAMS shells with 900 mm inner diameter and different wall thickness,when the molecular weight of PAMS is in the range of 300e500 kg·mol^(-1),perfect sphericity and good wall thickness uniformity can be obtained.In contrast,when increasing molecular weight to 800 kg·mol^(-1),the sphericity and the wall thickness uniformity become worse.Moreover,compared with the wall uniformity,the sphericity of PAMS shells was much less sensitive to the molecular weight.The results also showed that the stability of W1/O compound droplets of PAMS shells were less affected by the molecular weight.It was revealed that the wall uniformity and the sphericity of the PAMS shells were associated with the diffusion rates of fluorobenzene(FB).