Comment on "Unified explanation of the anomalous dynamic properties of highly asymmetric polymer blends" [J. Chem. Phys. 138, 054903 (2013)]

• Published in: The Journal of chemical physics 2013-05, Vol.138 (19), p.197101-197101
• Main Author: Colmenero, J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0021-9606; 1089-7690
• DOI: 10.1063/1.4804624

In a recent paper by Ngai and Capaccioli ["Unified explanation of the anomalous dynamic properties of highly asymmetric polymer blends," J. Chem. Phys. 138, 054903 (2013)] the authors claimed that the so-called coupling model (CM) provides a unified explanation of all dynamical anomalies that have been reported for dynamically asymmetric blends over last ten years. Approximately half of the paper is devoted to chain-dynamic properties involving un-entangled polymers. According to the authors, the application of the CM to these results is based on the existence of a crossover at a time t(c) ≈ 1-2 ns of the magnitudes describing chain-dynamics. Ngai and Capaccioli claimed that the existence of such a crossover is supported by the neutron scattering and MD-simulation results, corresponding to the blend poly(methyl methacrylate)/poly(ethylene oxide), by Niedzwiedz et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 168301 (2007)] and Brodeck et al. [Macromolecules 43, 3036 (2010)], respectively. Being one of the authors of these two papers, I will demonstrate here that there is no evidence supporting such a crossover in the data reported in these papers.