Phase Separation, Reaction Equilibrium, and Self-Assembly in Binary Telechelic Homopolymer Blends.

Abstract

We study a binary blend of telechelic homopolymers that can form reversible AB-type bonds at the chain ends. Reversibly bonding polymers display novel material properties, including thermal tunability and self-healing, that are not found in conventional covalently bonded polymers. Previous studies of reversibly bonding polymer systems have been limited by the computational demand of accounting for an infinite number of possible reaction products in a spatially inhomogeneous, self-assembled structure. We demonstrate that newly developed theoretical models and numerical methods enable the simultaneous computation of phase equilibrium, reaction equilibrium, and self-assembly via self-consistent field theory. Phase diagrams are computed at a variety of physically relevant conditions and are compared with nonreactive analogues as well as previous experimental studies of telechelic polymer blends.