Polymer-polymer miscibility

Abstract

The theoritical and practical aspects of xspolymer-polymer miscibility in the solid amorphous state are reviewed. The polymers include homopolymers and both random and block copolymers. Although present theoretical treatments of polymer-polymer miscibility all contain the random mixing hypothesis and are thus not applicable to mixtures that involve specific interactions between the components, most of the observed single-phase polymer-polymer mixtures involve hydrogen-bonding or other specific interactions between the components. Even in the absence of specific interactions, the composition of a random copolymer can often be tailored to provide miscibility with a particular homopolymer. Many polymer-polymer mixtures have lower critical solution temperatures, and a small number of such mixtures have given indications of upper critical solution temperatures. The special phenomena that may be observed when other polymers are mixed with block copolymers are discussed. © 1986 IUPAC