Polyelectrolyte blends and nontrivial behavior in effective flory-huggins parameters

Charles E. Sing, Monica Olvera De La Cruz*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

50 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Flory χ-parameter is a ubiquitous description of the extent of immiscibility that is apparent between two or more polymeric species. While the formalism is a powerful one in most systems of technological interest, experimentally obtaining this parameter requires the assumption of an underlying theoretical model. For charged systems, mapping to analogous uncharged systems is often assumed by introducing an "effective χ ", χeff. Random phase approximation (RPA) analysis based on the Hamiltonian used for recent self-consistent field theory-liquid-state theories (SCFT-LS) demonstrates that χeff incorporates molecular-level details such as charge ordering. Even for simple polyelectrolyte blends where the bare χ is kept constant, the observed χeff will drastically change as a function of composition; prediction of heterogeneous polyelectrolyte material phase behavior using χeff is thus highly nontrivial since an understanding of local charge structure is required.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)698-702
Number of pages5
JournalACS Macro Letters
Volume3
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 19 2014

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Materials Chemistry
  • Polymers and Plastics
  • Inorganic Chemistry
  • Organic Chemistry

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