Ralph Colby: You show recovery is much faster at high temperatures. But why there is no recovery at all at 25 °C?
Answer: There is probably recovery at 25 °C, but it is too slow to be observed. To have recovery, many stickers have to dissociate/associate to allow the subchains localized between two long-lifetime associations to equilibrate. At this low temperature, the sticker dynamics is slow, leading to a very long equilibration time. The latter is speeded up when the temperature is increased.
Ralph Colby: The metallosupramolecular system shows full recovery. Does this mean that if you perform longer creep tests, the sample will reach a maximum strain?
Answer: Probably no, as there is no permanent association in the sample. The sample recovery seems to be due to the fraction of very long lifetime topological constraints. As seen in Fig. 1, the conversion of the creep data into the...
