MECHANICAL-BEHAVIOR OF PS/PVC BLENDS COMPATIBILIZED WITH BLOCK-GRAFT COPOLYMERS BASED ON POLY(STYRENE-BLOCK-BUTADIENE)

Blends composed of polystyrene (PS) and polyvinylchloride (PVC) are incompatible due to unfavourable interactions. Consequently, their mechanical properties such as impact strength and elongation at break are only very poor. The key to successfully influence the properties of such heterogeneous blends lies in the control of the interface. High interface tensions and an insufficient phase adhesion often lead to coarse phase morphologies which are thermodynamically and kinetically unstable. However, with radically synthesized, tailor made block-graft copolymers P(S-b-(B-g-CHMA, MMA)) based on a styrene/butadiene two-block copolymer P(S-b-B) which are grafted with poly(cyclohexylmethacrylate) (PCHMA) or poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA), the phase morphology can be markedly refined and the blends surprisingly show ductile behaviour. Thus, the impact strength of so modified PS/PVC 1:1 blends is about ten times higher than in the unmodified case and is thereby similar to impact modified PS. Electron microscopy (SEM, TEM) reveals that the modified PS/PVC blends owe their improved mechanical properties to the interface selectivity of the block-graft copolymers and therefore to a superior phase adhesion.