Modification of polymer properties by blending is a common practice in the polymer industry. We report here a study of blends of cyanurate polymers by molecular modelling that shows that the final experimentally determined properties can be predicted from first principles modelling to a good degree of accuracy. There is always a compromise between simulation length, accuracy and speed of predic...

Polymer blends of cold water soluble starches (amylose or amylopectin soluble starch) with gelatin were prepared using solvent casting method. The solid state miscibility and polymer-polymer interactions between the constituent polymers were studied by fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorirmetry (DSC), light optical microscopy (OP...

We report the effects of blending a non-conjugated polymer, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), with the precursor polymer of poly(p-phenylene vinylene) (PPV). After thermal conversion, the PVA/PPV blends show markedly different absorption and luminescence spectra than neat PPV, even in blends containing only 1 wt.% PVA. These changes coincide with the disappearance of the nanocrystalline domains present ...

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a powerful characterization tool for polymer science, capable of revealing surface structures with superior spatial resolution. AFM is extremely useful for studying the local surface molecular composition and mechanical properties of a broad range of polymer materials, including block copolymers, bulk polymers, thin-film polymers, polymer composites, and polymer...

The green blends of an ionic liquid, 1-ethyl-3-propylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl) imide {[EPrI][TFSI]}, and a biodegradable polymer, poly(3hydroxybutyrate) (PHB), were investigated in this study. The influence of an ionic liquid on the crystallization behaviors of a biodegradable polymer was explored. In the blends, the presence of [EPrI][TFSI] decreased the Tg and Tm of PHB. Incor...

Diffusion and sorption of Biodegradable blends of sodium alginate (SA) and lignosulphonic acid (LS) has been studied at room temperature by conventional weight gain experiments. The sorption studies of SA/LS blends are carried in pH medium of 7.4. The sorption data are used to evaluate the mass transfer coefficients such as intrinsic diffusion coefficient and permeation coefficient. It was obse...

We derive an expression for the free energy of the blends of block copolymers expressed as a functional of the density distribution of the monomer of each block. The expression is a generalization of the Flory-Huggins-de Gennes theory for homo polymer blends, and also a generalization of the Ohta-Kawasaki theory for the melts of diblock copolymers. The expression can be used for any blends of h...