Predicting miscibility in polymer blends using the Bagley plot: Blends with poly(ethylene oxide)

Abstract

This paper explores the different methods currently available to obtain the partial solubility parameters of polymers in order to apply them for the prediction of miscibility in polymer/polymer blends. Blends based on poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) have been chosen because its miscibility has been reported with a large number of polymeric counterparts (miscible or not), allowing the representation of its miscibility map with the required detail. The solubility parameters of PEO and 55 blending partners have been obtained using the most widely used group contribution (GC) methods, namely the ones proposed by Hoy, Hoftyzer-Van Krevelen, Stefanis-Panayiotou and Yamamoto (Y-MB), and have been used to build a Bagley plot. In addition, the miscibility map based on experimental data obtained from solubility tests has been also obtained and compared with the calculated ones. The clouds of points obtained around the point corresponding to PEO show different shapes, that can be used to obtain conclusions about the coherence and the accuracy of each of the different methods used to obtain the solubility parameters of polymers.