Miscibility of blends of poly(2,6-dimethyl 1,4-phenylene oxide) with polystyrene-based ionomers and copolymers

Blends of poly(2,6-dimethyl 1,4-phenylene oxide) (PPhO) with the copolymer poly(styrene-co-methacrylic acid) (PS-MAA) and the ionomer poly(styrene-co-sodium methacrylate) (PS-MAA-Na), up to 10 mol% co-unit content, were investigated by dynamic mechanical thermal measurements. The PPhO/PS-MAA-Na blends are compared with PS/PS-MAA-Na blends. The blends of PPhO with PS-MAA are no longer miscible at 10 mol% acid content; this is attributed to a copolymer effect induced by the reduction of PS-PPhO interactions due to the presence of the MAA group which does not interact favorably with PPhO. The blends of PPhO with the ionomer are already immiscible at the lowest ion content studied (2.4 mol%), but become increasingly so as ion content is increased. Despite favorable PS-PPhO interactions, these blends are only a little more miscible than the PS/PS-MAA-Na blends. This is attributed to a combination of the increasing importance of the ionomer cluster phase (from which the homopolymer chains presumably are excluded) as ion content is increased, and of a copolymer effect between the homopolymers and the unclustered phase of the ionomer. These results are compared with published data indicating that blends of PPhO with another biphasic ionomer, zinc sulfonated polystyrene, are miscible. The contrasting behavior is rationalized in part by the suggestion that the copolymer effect between PPhO and the unclustered phase of the latter ionomer, but not of the former, is absent; this is related to multiplet structure and sizes. The analysis made of the above systems is extended to predict what might be the miscibility behavior between PPhO and other PS-based ionomer and related copolymer systems. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.