RHEOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF BLENDS OF LITHIUM-SOLFONATED OR SODIUM-SULFONATED POLYSTYRENE IONOMERS WITH POLYAMIDE 6

Dynamic viscoelastic properties of blends of alkali metal salts of sulfonated polystyrene ionomers with polyamide 6 were investigated in the melt. The blends of lithium-sulfonated polystyrene (10 mol% sulfonation) with polyamide 6 (LiSPS/PA-6) behaved as a homogeneous viscoelastic fluid over most of the blend composition range, since blending with PA-6 disrupted the ionic network of the LiSPS. Specific interactions between the lithium sulfonate group and the amide group are believed to be responsible for the behavior. By contrast, blends of sodium-sulfonated polystyrene with PA-6 (NaSPS/PA-6) showed typical behavior of immiscible systems in that they exhibited large positive deviations from the log-additivity rule for complex viscosity. This implied that sodium sulfonate groups did not interact strongly with amide groups, in contrast to the behavior of lithium sulfonates. Oldroyd's emulsion model was applied to the results of dynamic viscoelasticity studies of both the immiscible ionomer/PA-6 blends and the polystyrene/PA-6 blends. For the latter, the fit was much better than for the former. This difference in behavior might be due to partial miscibility or to the presence of an indistinct phase boundary in the ''immiscible'' ionomer-based systems.