Interphase Partitioning in Multiconstituent Polymer Systems

在多组分聚合物中，存在一个驱动力，使最低能量的组分优先吸附在表面，或使类似表面活性剂的物种优先驻留在聚合物-聚合物界面。这种界面分配的发生可以极大地改变多组分聚合物的表面和/或界面性质，是许多商业表面性质改性方法的基础。这项研究代表了一项全面的努力，通过对几个模型系统的彻底实验来理解这些现象背后的基本原理。这些包括可混溶的均聚物共混物、不相容的三元均聚物/均聚物/嵌段共聚物共混物、官能化封端均聚物，以及官能化封端均聚物与第二均聚物的不相容共混物。表面张力、表面化学结构和组成的表征是通过应用一些当前的表面和界面分析技术来完成的，以便将这些特征与组分的整体物理和热力学参数相关联。这些信息的可获得性将有助于多组分聚合物表面和界面改性剂的分子设计。

In multiconstituent polymers there exists a driving force for the lowest energy constituent to preferentially adsorb at the surface, or for a surfactant-like species to preferentially reside at a polymer-polymer interphase. The occurrence of this interphase partitioning can drastically alter the surface and/or interfacial properties of multicomponent polymers, and is the basis of many commercial methods for surface property modification. This research represents a comprehensive effort to understand the fundamental principles underlying these phenomena by thorough experimentation on several model systems. These include miscible homopolymer blends, immiscible ternary homopolymer/homopolymer/block copolymes blends, functionally terminated homopolymers, and immiscible blends of functionally terminated homopolymer with a second homopolymer. Characterization of the surface tension, and surface chemical structure and composition is accomplished by application of a number of current surface and interface analysis techniques in order to relate these features to the bulk physical and thermodynamic parameters of the constituents. The availability of this information will assist in the molecular design of surface and interfacial modifiers for multiconstituent polymers.