Reactive polymer blending is basically a flow/mixing-driven process of
interfacial generation, interfacial reaction for copolymer formation and
morphology development. This work shows two antagonistic effects of
mixing on this process: while mixing promotes copolymer formation by
creating interfaces and enhancing collisions between reactive groups at
the interfaces, excessive mixing may pull the in-situ formed copolymer
out of the interfaces to one of the two polymer components of the blend,
especially when the copolymer becomes highly asymmetrical. As such, the
copolymer may loss its compatibilization efficiency. The mixing-driven
copolymer pull-out from the interfaces is a catastrophic process (less
than a minute), despite the high viscosity of the polymer blend. It
depends on the molecular architecture of the reactive compatibilizer,
polymer blend composition, mixing intensity and annealing. These
findings are obtained using the concept of reactive
tracer-compatibilizer and a model reactive polymer blend.
Reactive Polymer Blending
