Hydrogen Bonding in Polymer Blends

Abstract

Polymer blends feature two or more polymers combined together; they often have mechanical, thermal, and optoelectronic properties superior to those of their individual polymers. Polymer blends can be classified into three basic phase behaviors: completely miscible, immiscible, and partially miscible blend systems. The miscibility of polymer blends; their self-assembly and supramolecular nanostructures; their nanocomposites; and low-surface-energy materials have all been investigated in detail in response to H-bonding strength. Compatible polymer blend systems remain immiscible, based on thermodynamic viewpoints, because most polymer blend systems have relatively high degrees of polymerization (DPs) and, thus, the favorable entropy terms of mixing become small relative to those of low-molecular-weight compound mixtures. In general, the Painter and Coleman association model (PCAM) can predict the behavior of H-bonded polymer blends for most systems. The fractions or numbers of free and H-bonded functional groups can be determined using infrared (IR) spectroscopy.