INTERFACES BETWEEN HIGHLY INCOMPATIBLE POLYMERS OF DIFFERENT STIFFNESS - MONTE-CARLO SIMULATIONS AND SELF-CONSISTENT-FIELD CALCULATIONS

We investigate interfacial properties between two highly incompatible polymers of different stiffness. The extensive Monte Carlo simulations of the binary polymer melt yield detailed interfacial profiles and th e interfacial tension via an analysis of capillary fluctuations. We ex tract an effective Flory-Huggins parameter from the simulations, which is used in self-consistent field calculations. These take due account of the chain architecture via a partial enumeration of the single cha in partition function, using chain conformations obtained by Monte Car lo simulations of the pure phases. The agreement between the simulatio ns and self-consistent field calculations is almost quantitative, howe ver, we find deviations from the predictions of the Gaussian chain mod el for high incompatibilities or large stiffnesses. The interfacial wi dth at very high incompatibilities is smaller than the prediction of t he Gaussian chain model, and decreases upon increasing the statistical segment length of the semiflexible component. (C) 1997 American Insti tute of Physics.