| dc.description.abstract | New techniques, such as X-ray and neutron scattering, solid-state NMR, and fluorescence quenching, have attracted much research interest in probing miscibility of multicomponent polymer systems because of their capacity to determine the phase diagram of blends more precisely, and to obtain information at earlier stages of phase separation than the traditional methods. Among these new tools, the fluorescence quenching techniques are most often used owing to their great sensitivity to elucidate local molecular environments at sub-nanometer level. The technique is based on the fact that, the characteristic fluorescence signal of dye molecules attached to polymer chains will be influenced by the phase miscibility of a specific blend system. Although phosphorescence quenching has been used successfully to study the molecular interactions in solution between small molecule-small molecule, polymer-small molecule, and polymer-polymer, there is no report regarding miscibility studies of solid state polymer blends using phosphorescent probes. Because the lifetime of a chromophore in the triplet state is much longer than that in the singlet state, phosphorescence quenching techniques are expected to have the capacity to monitor large phase domains and therefore are able to bridge the gap between thermo-mechanical techniques and fluorescent methods. In this study, we investigate the feasibility of studying phase miscibility of solid-state polymer blends by phosphorescence quenching methods. | en_US |
