Viscoelastic phase separation in polyethersulfone modified bismaleimide resin

The polymerization-induced phase separation process of polyethersulfone (PES) modified bismaleimide resin, 4,4'-bis-maleimidodiphenylmethane (BDM), was investigated by time resolved light scattering (TRLS) and scanning electronic microscopes (SEM). At the blends with 10 wt% and 12.5 wt% PES, a phase inversion structure was found by SEM. TRLS results displayed clearly the spinodal decomposition (SD) mechanism and the exponential decay procedure of scattering vector q(m), which followed Maxwell-type relaxation equation. The characteristic relaxation time tau for the blends can be described by the Williams-Landel-Ferry equation. It demonstrated experimentally that the phase separation behaviors in these PES modified bismaleimide blends were affected by viscoelastic effect. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.