MULTIFRACTAL ANALYSIS - A NEW METHOD FOR THE CHARACTERIZATION OF THE MORPHOLOGY OF MULTICOMPONENT POLYMER SYSTEMS

It has been demonstrated that use of polymeric emulsifiers under usual processing conditions in the melt state is a powerful technique for p reparing polymer alloys. Digitized representation of optical micrograp hs of thin sections of blends of a low-density polyethylene and polyst yrene (20 wt % PE-80 wt % PS) containing 2 and 5 wt % of two hydrogena ted polybutadiene-polystyrene block copolymers exhibit different degre es of homogeneity as well as different morphological structures which can be studied by a multifractal analysis. We show how these differenc es are reflected in the f (alpha) spectrum of singularities which can be obtained by a box counting method in the canonical approximation. W e have found a correlation between the f (alpha) curves and the mechan ical properties of the corresponding samples: the samples which area t he less multifractals have the best mechanical properties.