Rheology of miscible polymer blends with viscoelastic asymmetry and concentration fluctuation

How the viscoelastic asymmetry affects the concentration fluctuation and its manifestation in rheology of miscible polymer blends are examined in this work. The linear viscoelastic stress of polymer blends is divided into the components stress and the stress due to concentration fluctuation. The dynamic coupling between the fluctuation in concentration and the stress is represented by the two-fluid model, which is linearized and solved under small amplitude oscillatory shear to give the concentration fluctuation induced stress. A strong influence of components’ viscoelasticity on the concentration fluctuation is clearly demonstrated in the viscoelastic asymmetric system through the enhancement in the elastic modulus at low frequency. The decisive parameter is the viscoelastic length which depends mainly on the dynamic asymmetric parameter and the zero shear viscosity of blends. It is also found that the dynamic coupling effect gradually fades as it gets close to the spinodal point, where pure concentration fluctuation dominates. The dynamic moduli due to the concentration fluctuation at spinodal point exhibits the same power law dependence on oscillatory frequency, which is a characteristic of critical gel and could be used as an alternative criteria to determine the spinodal temperature.