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Monte Carlo simulations of crystallization in heterogeneous copolymers: The role of copolymer fractions with intermediate comonomer content

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2012

Feng Yang ,
Huanhuan Gao  and
Wenbing Hu
Feng Yang
Affiliation:
Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, 210093 Nanjing, China; and Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics China at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190 Beijing, China
Huanhuan Gao
Affiliation:
Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, 210093 Nanjing, China; and Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics China at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190 Beijing, China
Wenbing Hu*
Affiliation:
Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, 210093 Nanjing, China; and Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics China at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190 Beijing, China
*
a)Address all correspondence to this author. e-mail: wbhu@nju.edu.cn
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Abstract

Heterogeneous copolymers contain diverse comonomer contents among copolymers, and the extremely diverse case becomes a binary polymer blend. We report a numerical study of crystallization in two series of heterogeneous copolymers that are separated with strong and weak heterogeneities of comonomer distributions, and both of which are composed of crystallizable monomers and noncrystallizable comonomers with various compositions. A comparison of simulation results between these two series of samples demonstrates that, something like a compatibilizer in an incompatible polymer blend, copolymer fractions with intermediate comonomer contents between two compositional extremities depress the prior liquid–liquid demixing on cooling, and hence weaken the subsequent crystallization behaviors. However, we found that in these intermediate fractions, comonomers distribute quite homogeneously on each chain and the amphiphilicity occurs on multiple short sequences, rather than like on a diblock copolymer.

Keywords

PolymerCrystallineMorphology
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Materials Research , Volume 27 , Issue 10: Focus Issue: Crystallization Processes in Polymer-Based Materials , 28 May 2012 , pp. 1383 - 1388
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2012

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