Investigation on the early and late stage phase-separation dynamics of poly(methyl methacrylate)/poly(α-methyl styrene-co-acrylonitrile) blends through rheological and scattering functions

The phase-separation behavior of poly(methyl methacrylate)/poly(alpha-methyl styrene-co-acrylonitrile) (PMMA/alpha-MSAN) blends with two different compositions was studied by time-resolved small angle light scattering (SALS) in the spinodal decomposition (SD) regime from 160 to 210 degrees C. The rheological function (WLF-like equation) was introduced into the processing of light scattering data. It was found that the WLF-like equation was applicable to describe the temperature dependence of apparent diffusion coefficient D-app and the relaxation time tau of normalized scattering intensity (I(t)-I(0))/(I-m-I(0)) at the early stage of SD, as well as the relaxation time tau of maximum scattering intensity I-m and characteristic scattering vector q(m) with I-m at the late stage of SD for PMMA/alpha-MSAN blends with two different compositions. This is in consistence with the phase-separation behavior of PMMA/SAN reported in our previous paper. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.