MISCIBILITY IN COPOLYMER/HOMOPOLYMER BLENDS

In order to study the miscibility of a copolymer with its corresponding homopolymers, varieties of multicomponent polymers including simple graft, muhibranch, diblock, triblock and four-arm block copolymers and so-called ABCPs were synthesized and characterized. The morphologies of the blends comprising the copolymers and the corresponding homopolymers were examined by electron microscopy. It is concluded that besides molecular weight, architecture of a copolypaers has apparent effect on the miscibility, i.e. the more complex is molecular architecture, the greater is conformation restriction in microdomain formation and the less is solubility of homopolymer in corresponding domains. In addition, a density gradient model is suggested for describing the segment distribution of the bound and free chains in block-homopolymer systems. Using this model, Helfand’s theory is extended to the blends of copolymer and homopolymer predicting the miscibility which is in good agreement with the experimental results.