brush virgin intercalated NANOSTRUCTURING AND THERMAL BEHAVIOR OF POLYMERS: TOWARD IMPROVING LONGEVITY OF IMPORTANT PETROLEUM DERIVED PRODUCTS Sergey VYAZOVKIN, Department of Chemistry, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294 brush virgin intercalated Calorimetry was used to study the thermal behavior of virgin polystyrene (PS) as well as of PS-clay nanocomposites of exfoliated brush and of intercalated structure dissolved in carbon disulfide. Compared to virgin PS, the behavior of the brush material showed little difference, whereas the intercalated material demonstrated markedly larger heats of gelation and gel melting. Isoconversional kinetic analysis of the melting process revealed that the activation energy was independent of the conversion for the gels prepared under isothermal conditions, whereas an increase in the activation energy with the extent of conversion was observed for the gels prepared under continuous cooling conditions. The melting of the nonisothermally prepared gels apparently occurred alongside with the formation of new gel structures. So far this is the first study of the effect of nanostructuring on the dynamics sol-gel and gel-sol transformation.