Engineering Commons^™

Morphology Development In Polymer Blends Exhibiting Strong Intermolecular Interactions, Robert Weiss, Y. Feng, C. C. Han, A. Karim

Robert Weiss

He et al. measured the spinodal decomposition (SD) kinetics of a blend of poly(butyl methacrylate) with a polystyrene modified with 1.5 mol% of a hydroxy-containing comonomer that exhibited intermolecular hydrogen bonding, who studied blends. For small excursions into the spinodal region, multiple structures developed in the blend, which suggested that multiple mechanisms may be involved in the phase separation process. For most cases, however, the kinetics of phase separation followed Cahn-Hilliard theory in the early stage of spinodal decomposition and a self-similar mechanism in the later stages, similar to non-associating polymer blends such as PS/PVME. The failure to observe an …