Thermodynamics of miscible polymer blends studied by inverse gas chromatography

Use of inverse gas chromatography for the investigation of polymer-polymer interactions is compromised by a dependence of the measured polymer-polymer interaction coefficient, B₂₃, on the chemical nature of the probe in contradiction to theory currently used. We have developed a procedure whereby the “true” B₂₃, may be extracted from the probe dependent data. Additionally a theory of mixing based on a multidimensional solubility parameter approach has been developed. The new theory has been used to predict the polymer-polymer interaction coefficients and these are compared with experimentally determined values on several miscible blends.