Characterization of single-phase and phase-separating polymer blends by rheology, optical and electron microscopy, and solid state NMR

Miscible and phase-separated blends are of great practical interest because a range of useful materials can be produced by blending existing polymers.;The relation between rheology and time dependent morphology of a phase separating binary blend of polystyrene and poly(vinyl methyl ether) was investigated by heating a sample from the single phase (at 90 ;The thermorheological behavior of binary model blends of polystyrene and poly(2, 6-dimethylphenylene oxide) is also examined. Their rheological properties were modeled based on parameters of the pure components. The pure components were treated as slightly polydisperse linear flexible polymers and the relaxation behavior of the blends was presented as the linear superposition of the relaxation behavior of the pure components while the parameters of our model were successfully correlated with the glass transition temperature of our blend samples.