posted on 2016-07-13, 17:49authored byJun Wang, Alejandra Reyna-Valencia, Basil D. Favis
Two ternary blend
systems of low-density polyethylene/poly(ether-block-amide)/polyethylene terephthalate (LDPE/PEBA/PET)
and LDPE/PEBA/polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) are prepared by melt
blending to thermodynamically assemble the ionically conductive PEBA
copolymer at the continuous interface. The LDPE/PEBA/PET blend demonstrates
weak partial wetting and a novel morphology transition to complete
wetting was observed as the PEBA composition increases from 3% to
about 10%. The phenomena can be explained by a mechanism based on
the competition between dewetting and coalescence of the PEBA phase
at the interface. In the completely wet LDPE/PEBA/PVDF system, a minimum
concentration is required to form intact PEBA layers with a thickness
of ∼100 nm. Assembling PEBA at the interface of the ternary
systems results in the formation of conductive pathways of very low
percolation thresholds and thus leads to a significant reduction in
the resistivity for both ternary systems as compared to binary blends
with PEBA. A particularly sharp drop in resistivity is observed for
the complete wetting morphology of LDPE/PEBA/PVDF.