The generalized two-dimensional correlation analysis based on time-resolved light scattering patterns (2D TRLS) has been employed to study the phase separation process of an epoxy-amine-polyethersulfone blend in which the secondary phase separation takes place. The results of the 2D TRLS provided more detailed information that was not readily observed in the 1D TRLS patterns. (i) During the first process of phase separation, the sequential order of coarsening in size of the domains among the larger and smaller ones has been reversed between the diffusion regime and the hydrodynamic regime. (ii) The change of the larger domains in size, due to the hydrodynamic flow in the late stage of the first phase separation process, keeps on taking place earlier than that of the new domains appeared in the secondary phase separation process. (iii) During the secondary phase separation process the size growth of the smaller domains takes place earlier than that of the larger ones, probably due to the assumption that the coarsening mode could decrease the interface tension more quickly.
Free radical polymerization and living ion polymerization have been simulated via the dynamic Monte Carlo method with the bond-fluctuation model in this paper. The polymeriza-tion-related parameters such as conversion of monomers, degree of polymerization, average molecular weight and its distribution are obtained by statistics. The simulation outputs are con-sistent with the corresponding theoretical predictions. The scaling relationships of the coil size versus chain length are also confirmed at different volume fractions. Furthermore, the effect of diffusion on polymerization is revealed preliminarily in our simulation. Hence the simulation ap-proach has been proven to be feasible to investigate polymerization reactions with the advan-tages that configuration and diffusion of polymer chains can be examined together with polym-erization kinetics.
Lü Wenqi & DING Jiandong Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China