The effect of pressure on the liquid–liquid phase equilibrium of two polydisperse polyalkylsiloxane blends
The effect of pressure-induced immiscibility in polymer blends is investigated by experimental and theoretical methods. Experimental data of cloud point curves and critical points are obtained by turbidity measurements. The chosen system is a mixture of polydimethylsiloxane and polyhexylmethylsiloxane which is one of the very few polymer blends exhibiting pressure-induced immiscibility. This unusual behaviour is related to a critical temperature minimum of the critical curve and cloud point isopleths at positive pressure in the temperature–pressure diagram. The effect of the chain length on the critical temperature minimum is investigated here based on theoretical models. The effect of diff…
Liquid-liquid phase equilibria in polymer solutions and polymer mixtures
The pressure dependence of liquid-liquid equilibria in weakly interacting binary macromolecular systems (homopolymer solutions and blends) will be discussed. The common origin of the separate high-temperature/low-temperature and high-pressure/low-pressure branches of demixing curves will be demonstrated by extending the study into the region of metastable liquid states including the undercooled, overheated and stretched states (i.e. states at negative pressures). The seemingly different response of the UCST-branch of solutions and blends when pressurized (pressure induced mixing for most polymer solutions, pressure induced demixing for most blends) will be explained in terms of the location…
On the effect of pressure on the phase transition of polymer blends and polymer solutions: Oligostyrene–n-alkane systems
Critical temperatures of some binary solutions of weakly interacting low molecular weight polystyrenes dissolved in linear alkanes (oligoethylenes) were measured over the range 0.1 to 100 MPa. While (dT/dP)crit along the upper critical solution (UCS) locus for a “typical blend” is positive, and for the “ typical solution” can be either positive or negative (but is usually negative), there is no essential difference between blend and solution. Rather, the difference in sign is a consequence of the location of the hypercritical point (that point in (T,P)crit space where (dT/dP)crit changes sign, [(dT/dP)crit = 0 and (d2T/dP2)crit>0], also called the double critical point, DCP), which is norma…