Phase Behaviors in Compressible Polymer Blends. 2020

Xiaofei Xu
State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering and School of Chemical Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.

We study phase behaviors in compressible polymer blends by using an equation of state in the framework of classical density-functional theory. The phase behaviors are explored by decomposing the compressible mixing of polymers into two steps: incompressible mixing as holding the volume and density relaxation at the given pressure. There exists both upper consolute pressure (UCP) and lower consolute pressure (LCP). LCP-type behaviors are driven by the entropy effect of asymmetric size of molecules, while UCP-type behaviors are driven by energetic interactions. The value of LCP follows a scaling of O(N-2), which can be improved to O(N-1.8) by taking into account the effects of random chain conformation. The volume of LCP-type polymers expands upon mixing, while that of UCP-type polymers contracts. A closed-loop phase coexisting curve may appear because of the interplay between UCP- and LCP-type behaviors. At the UCP/LCP boundary, the mixing free energy of density relaxation is much smaller than that of both UCP- and LCP-type behaviors. The contribution from incompressible mixing step always dominates the phase behaviors, while that from density relaxation step could distinguish UCP-type between LCP-type behaviors.

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