Compatibility of poly (ethylene oxide) with tactic poly (2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate)

Abstract

Blends of conventional poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) and poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA) with different tacticities were studied by calorimetric and vibrational method. The melting temperature ($T_m$) and degree of crystallinity ($X_c$) was determined with a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). And from the FT-IR spectrometer, the spectra of PEO in these blends were obtained by a digital subtraction method. From the results, it appeared that syndio-PHEMA is more miscible with PEO than iso-PHEMA, whereas a-PHEMA has an intermediate miscibility between syndio-PHEMA and iso-PHEMA. Because iso-PHEMA has more hydroxy groups out of back bone than those of syndio-PHEMA, it is better self-associative than syndio-PHEMA and this is the reason why iso-PHEMA has wrose miscibility with PEO than syndio-PHEMA. However, in the blends with higher contents of PHEMAs due to the very free hydroxy groups of PHEMAs, all of three PHEMAs have good miscibilities.