F. Benmouna et al., ON THE PHASE-BEHAVIOR OF BLENDS OF POLYMERS AND NEMATIC LIQUID-CRYSTALS, Macromolecular theory and simulations, 7(6), 1998, pp. 599-611
The phase behavior of mixtures of polymers and nematic liquid crystals
(LC) is investigated. Two types of systems are examined. The first on
e deals with blends in which the polymer is made of Linear chains. In
this case, a systematic study of the effects of various parameters on
the phase diagrams is performed. In particular, it is shown how increa
sing the polymer size and/or the LC molecule size increases the miscib
ility gap of the mixture. It also reduces the region where a single ne
matic phase is observed in the presence of a tiny amount of polymer. L
ikewise, the relative effects of the isotropic and the nematic interac
tion parameters on the phase diagrams are examined. The second part of
this investigation deals with blends involving crosslinked polymers.
Here, substantial differences are observed as compared to the case whe
re the polymer components are made of linear chains. These differences
are illustrated by showing the phase diagrams in similar conditions f
or both blends. Unlike the case of a Linear polymer matrix, it is obse
rved that the single nematic phase and the nematic-isotropic spinodal
branches are absent from the phase diagram of crosslinked polymers. Th
is results into significant distortions of the phase diagram. In order
to highlight all these effects, examples representing hypothetical bl
ends are considered. These examples are chosen for illustration of the
results in which the choice of numerical parameters is made consisten
tly with the existing values in the literature which makes comparison
with published data possible.