Characterization of interfaces in Poly (styrene-co-acrylonitrile) (SAN) based ternary polymer blends: A new approach from positron lifetime spectroscopy

Positron lifetime spectroscopy is used to develop a new approach to characterize the individual interfaces in ternary polymer blends and hence determine composition dependent miscibility level. This approach has its genesis in KSR and KRZ models for the evaluation of hydrodynamic interaction parameters (αij). The method successfully applied for binary blends (single interface) earlier is theoretically modified for ternary blends and experimentally verified by measuring free volume content in blends and their constituents. We have tested the efficacy of this method in two ternary blends namely SAN/PVC/PMMA and SAN/EVA/PVC at different compositions. The effective hydrodynamic parameter αeff evaluated using individual α values turns out to be handy in predicting the overall miscibility level of a ternary blend. Results show that SAN/PVC/PMMA exhibits maximum αeff of −9.67 at composition 75/5/20 and SAN/EVA/PVC shows −3.18 at 50/35/15 indicating that miscibility level is high at these compositions for these two blends. DSC and SEM studies have also been used to supplement positron results.