PREDICTION OF MISCIBILITY REGIONS IN TERNARY BLENDS OF POLY(STYRENE-STAT-ACRYLONITRILE), POLY(ACRYLONITRILE-STAT-METHYL METHACRYLATE), AND POLY(STYRENE-STAT-METHYL METHACRYLATE)

The miscibilities of ternary copolymer blends prepared from poly (styrene-stat-acrylonitrile), poly(styrene-stat-methyl methacrylate), and poly(methyl methacrylate-stat-acrylonitrile) were predicted by calculating the interaction parameter, chi(blend), for various blend combinations, from the corresponding binary segmental interaction parameters estimated from previous work. Binodal and spinodal curves were calculated using the Flory-Huggins theory and it was observed that the most accurate estimate of the boundary between miscible and immiscible blends was given by the spinodal. It has also been demonstrated that in some of the ternary blends with fixed copolymer compositions the miscibility of the blend can be altered by changing the ratio of the three components in the mixture. Conditions for miscibility in this ternary system, and possibly a general feature of all such systems, are (a) that at least two of the binary interaction parameters chi(ij) are less than the critical value chi(crit), while the third should not be too much larger, that is, one of the copolymers may act as a compatibilizer for the other two copolymers, (b) that the difference DELTAchi = /chi12 - chi13/ is small.