Relationship between Hansen Solubility Parameters of ABS and its Homopolymer Components of PAN,PB, and PS

ABS, an important terpolymer produced from acrylonitrile, butadiene, and styrene, is widely used in the form of ABS alloys. Because the microstructure of ABS and its alloys shows a multiphase, researching the miscibility is of significant concern for ABS applications. In order to completely understand the special solubility properties of ABS resin, the relationship between Hansen solubility parameters (HSP) of ABS and its homopolymer components (polystyrene, polyacrylonitrile, and polybutadiene) were researched by the Hansen method in this paper. It was found that the dipolar component and hydrogen-bonding component of polyacrylonitrile were the strongest, and the dipolar component and hydrogen-bonding component of polybutadiene were the weakest. An interesting phenomenon was observed, namely that the HSP of the copolymer of styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN) and ABS were very similar to the HSP of polystyrene. This means that the HSP of ABS, the typical terpolymer, were not the addition or average of the HSP of its three homopolymer components; instead they were decided by only one homopolymer component, the polystyrene segment.