In materials science, a polymer blend, or polymer mixture, is a member of a class of materials analogous to metal alloys, in which at least two polymers are blended together to create a new material with different physical properties.
During the 1940s, '50s and '60s, the commercial development of new monomers for production of new polymers seemed endless. In this period, it was discovered that the development of the new techniques for the modification of the already existing polymers, would be economically viable.
The first technique of modification developed was the polymerization, in other words, the joint polymerization of more than one kind of polymer.
A new polymers modification process, based on a simple mechanical mixture of two polymers first appeared when Thomas Hancock got one mixture of natural rubber with gutta-percha. This process generated a new polymer class called "polymer blends".
Polymer blends can be broadly divided into three categories:
immiscible polymer blends (heterogeneous polymer blends): This is by far the most populous group. If the blend is made of two polymers, two glass transition temperatures will be observed.
compatible polymer blends: Immiscible polymer blend that exhibits macroscopically uniform physical properties. The macroscopically uniform properties are usually caused by sufficiently strong interactions between the component polymers.
miscible polymer blends (homogeneous polymer blend): Polymer blend that is a single-phase structure. In this case, one glass transition temperature will be observed.
The use of the term polymer alloy for a polymer blend is discouraged, as the former term includes multiphase copolymers but excludes incompatible polymer blends.
Examples of miscible polymer blends:
homopolymer–homopolymer:
polyphenylene oxide (PPO) – polystyrene (PS): noryl developed by General Electric Plastics in 1966 (now owned by SABIC). The miscibility of the two polymers in noryl is caused by the presence of an aromatic ring in the repeat units of both chains
polyethylene
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In materials science, a polymer blend, or polymer mixture, is a member of a class of materials analogous to metal alloys, in which at least two polymers are blended together to create a new material with different physical properties. During the 1940s, '50s and '60s, the commercial development of new monomers for production of new polymers seemed endless. In this period, it was discovered that the development of the new techniques for the modification of the already existing polymers, would be economically viable.
In polymer chemistry, a copolymer is a polymer derived from more than one species of monomer. The polymerization of monomers into copolymers is called copolymerization. Copolymers obtained from the copolymerization of two monomer species are sometimes called bipolymers. Those obtained from three and four monomers are called terpolymers and quaterpolymers, respectively. Copolymers can be characterized by a variety of techniques such as NMR spectroscopy and size-exclusion chromatography to determine the molecular size, weight, properties, and composition of the material.
A polymer (ˈpɒlᵻmər; Greek poly-, "many" + -mer, "part") is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic and natural polymers play essential and ubiquitous roles in everyday life. Polymers range from familiar synthetic plastics such as polystyrene to natural biopolymers such as DNA and proteins that are fundamental to biological structure and function.
The student has a basic understanding of the physical and physicochemical principles which result from the chainlike structure of synthetic macromolecules. The student can predict major characteristic
Explores the thermodynamics of polymer blends, phase diagrams, miscible blends, phase segregation, block copolymers, and applications in thermoplastic elastomers and nanotechnology.