Effect of thermal oxidation on the self-assembly of triblock terpolymers

Juan Sebastian Montana (1) , Sébastien Roland (1) , Guillaume Miquelard Garnier (1) , Emmanuel Richaud (1)

1 PIMM - Laboratoire Procédés et Ingénierie en Mécanique et Matériaux

This paper reports an investigation of the thermal degradation of a poly(styrene-b-butadiene-b-methyl methacrylate) triblock terpolymer compared with those of butadiene rubbers and poly(styrene-b-methyl methacrylate). According to sol-gel properties changes, it was proposed that polybutadiene blocks undergo mainly crosslinking. However, these latter coexist with chain scissions occurring in polybutadiene blocks, which generates poly(butadiene-b-methyl methacrylate) and poly(butadiene-b-styrene) diblock chains, and possibly chain scissions occurring in polystyrene and poly(methyl methacylate) blocks. The consequences of the degradation on the self-assembly of triblock terpolymer were studied through the annealing kinetics monitored by Atomic Force Microscopy. It appears that at low conversion degrees, chain scissions induce a faster self-assembly kinetics. At higher oxidation degrees, crosslinking of butadiene phase combined with scissions induces a “frozen” state at high annealing times characterized by a macrophase separation.

Mots clés: Chain scissions; Self-assembly; Block terpolymers; Thermal oxidation; Crosslinking

Domaines: Polymères; Matériaux; Mécanique [physics.med-ph]

Juan Sebastian Montana, Sébastien Roland, Guillaume Miquelard Garnier, Emmanuel Richaud. Effect of thermal oxidation on the self-assembly of triblock terpolymers. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 2017, 146, pp.229-239. ⟨10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2017.10.013⟩. ⟨hal-01630815⟩