An unusual, completely miscible, ternary hydrogen-bonded polymer blend of phenoxy, phenolic, and PCL

Abstract

We have investigated the miscibility and hydrogen-bonding behavior of ternary blends of phenoxy, phenolic, and poly(e-caprolactone) (PCL) by using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. On the basis of DSC analyses, we observed a rare totally miscible ternary hydrogen-bonded polymer blend in the amorphous phase: all compositions of this ternary blend display a single glass transition temperature. In addition, these single glass transition temperatures can be predicted well by extending the Kwei equation from the binary polymer blend to this ternary polymer blend. The infrared spectra indicate that the intermolecular hydrogen bonding of each pair of binary components still exists in the ternary polymer blend. We used the ternary totally miscible blend to determine the interassociation equilibrium constant between the hydroxyl groups of phenolic and the hydroxyl groups of phenoxy indirectly from the fraction of hydrogen-bonded carbonyl groups of PCL. Quantitative analyses suggest that interassociation between the hydroxyl groups of phenolic and the hydroxyl groups of phenoxy is more favorable than the hydroxyl-carbonyl interassociations of either phenolic/PCL or phenoxy/PCL and the hydroxyl-hydroxyl self-association of the pure phenolic and phenoxy homopolymers at room temperature.