Molecular interactions in cosolvent ternary polymer systems

Abstract

A formalism recently proposed to study the excluded volume effect in ternary polymer solutions is used to analyse, in terms of inter- and intra-molecular interactions, mixtures of poly(ethyl methacrylate)(PEMA) in acetonitrile (AcN)–1-chlorobutane (ClBu) and in AcN–BrBu. Viscometric and light-scattering techniques have been used to obtain intrinsic viscosities, second virial coefficients and preferential solvation parameters as a function of the binary solvent composition. Solvent(1)–solvent(2)–polymer(3) contacts have been evaluated using the Flory–Huggins–Pouchly formalism, and the individual contributions of both inter- and intra-molecular segment–segment contacts to the excluded volume are reported and discussed.