Phase behavior and interfacial tension of ternary polymer mixtures with block copolymers

The phase behavior and interfacial tension of ternary polymeric mixtures (polystyrene/polystyrene-b-poly(methyl methacrylate)/poly(methyl methacrylate), PS/PS-b-PMMA/PMMA) are investigated by dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations. Our simulation results show that, as the PS-b-PMMA diblock copolymer concentration increases, the interfacial tension decreases due to the decayed correlations between homopolymers PS and PMMA. When the chain lengths of copolymers are fixed, with the increase of the chain lengths of PS and PMMA homopolymers the interfacial width becomes wider and the interfacial tension becomes smaller, due to the copolymers presenting more stretched and swollen structures in the mixtures with the short length of homopolymers. However, with simultaneously increasing chain lengths of both diblock copolymer and homopolymers with a fixed ratio, the interfacial tension increases because the copolymer chains with longer chain length penetrate more deeply into the homopolymer phase and the interactions between diblock copolymers become weaker. These results will provide a way to mix incompatible homopolymers to improve material performances.

Automated summary

The interfacial tension decreases with increasing concentration of PS-b-PMMA diblock copolymer, but increases when both the copolymer and homopolymers have longer chain lengths. Increasing the chain lengths of PS and PMMA homopolymers widens the interfacial width and reduces the interfacial tension. These results suggest a method to mix incompatible homopolymers for improved material performance.