Glassy states and microphase separation in cross-linked homopolymer blends

Abstract

The physical properties of blends of distinct homopolymers, cross-linked beyond the gelation point, are addressed via a Landau approach involving a pair of coupled order-parameter fields: one describing vulcanisation, the other describing local phase separation. Thermal concentration fluctuations, present at the time of cross-linking, are frozen in by cross-linking, and the structure of the resulting glassy fluctuations is analysed at the Gaussian level in various regimes, determined by the relative values of certain physical length-scales. The enhancement, due to gelation, of the stability of the blend with respect to demixing is also analysed. Beyond the corresponding stability limit, gelation prevents complete demixing, replacing it by microphase separation, which occurs up to a length-scale set by the rigidity of the network, as a simple variational scheme reveals.

arXiv comment7 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Randomly Crosslinked Macromolecular Systems: Vulcanisation Transition to and Properties of the Amorphous Solid State
• Universality and its Origins at the Amorphous Solidification Transition

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Self-Consistent Field Approach for Crosslinked Copolymer Materials
• Glassy correlations and microstructures in randomly crosslinked homopolymer blends
• Phenomenological Theory of Isotropic-Genesis Nematic Elastomers
• Microphase separation in cross-linked polymer blends: Efficient replica RPA post-processing of simulation data for homopolymer networks
• Phase diagram of selectively cross-linked block copolymers shows chemically microstructured gel
• From Vulcanization to Isotropic and Nematic Rubber Elasticity