Phase separation in polymer blends comprising copolymers: 6. Effect of molecular architecture of block copolymers

To study the effect of the molecular architecture of a copolymer on its miscibility with corresponding homopolymers a series of block copolymers of styrene and isoprene with diblock, triblock and four-arm star architectures have been prepared and the morphologies of the blends of the copolymers and polyisoprene with different molecular weights have been examined by electron microscopy. The results show that miscibility varies in the sequence diblock>triblock>four-arm star copolymers. This sequence is in the opposite direction to the variation of the architectural complexity of the block copolymers, i.e. the more complex is molecular architecture, the greater is conformation restriction in microdomain formation and the less is solubility of homopolymer in corresponding domains.