| Simultaneous Interpenetrating Polymer Networks (IPN's) of PMMA/PCU and related composite materials with various architectures such as pseudo IPN's, linear blends, graft copolymer and fully grafted gelled networks have been prepared and characterized by various instruments such as NMR, FT-IR, GPC, DSC, DMA, TGA, TEM, SEM, and Instron test (tensile strength and elongation). Their chemical resistance, thermal stability and mechanical properties have been investigated. The full IPN's exhibited a single morphology even though the linear blends are completely immiscible. The full IPN's show a maximum tensile strength at a certain composition and superior chemical and thermal resistances as compared to the pseudo IPN's, linear blends, pure crosslinked PMMA and PCU, as well as the graft copolymer and fully grafted networks. The effect of MW and molecular architecture of PMMA (chain or star polymer) on the phase morphology of pseudo IPN of PMMA and PCU has been discussed in terms of the "entanglement" of chains in the crosslinked network. The influence of the difference of the component solubility parameters and T{dollar}sb{lcub}rm g{rcub}{dollar}'s of the linear components on the phase morphology of the simultaneous IPN's formed from these polymers has also been studied. |
