Alloys and Blends

Abstract

Over the last few decades, polymer blends or alloys have grown from very small beginnings to become a major area of research and commerce¹. This field is driven commercially by the demand for ever-increasing physical, mechanical, thermal and other properties. Faced with this situation, there are two general responses. The first would be to synthesise a new polymer to meet the desired specifications. This approach has two major drawbacks. Firstly, polymer science has yet to reach the state of maturity which allows the design and synthesis of materials with prescribed properties. The other problem is that the cost of developing and manufacturing a new polymer from scratch is very high. The second approach is to blend usually not more than two polymers, which will in combination, but not singly, have the desired properties. This is clearly a vastly less expensive route. It is the case, however, that the vast majority of polymer pairs are immiscible, but even these can have important properties such as markedly enhanced impact strength.