This award will enable Prof. Ben Chu of the State University of New York at Stony Brook to collaborate with Prof. Takuhei Nose of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, over a period of two years. They will investigate how the behavior of binary polymer blends differs from that of binary fluid mixtures. Polymer blends may behave in at least two different ways, depending upon whether they consist only of high or only of low molecular weight fractions; or of high molecular weight fractions dissolved in a solvent of small molecules. Study of the cross-over between these two modes of behavior will be examined by using a high molecular weight fraction for one polymer component and by varying the molecular weight of the second polymer component. For these various blends, such measurable quantities as local concentration fluctuations and properties of phase separation will be used to characterize behavior at the cross-over between behavior types. The purposes of this research are to test the basic theory of critical phenomena for polymer systems, and to provide new knowledge in the field of advanced polymer materials. The researchers share common interests in polymer solutions, blends, and critical phenomena, and have visited each other's laboratories in the past. Their combined experience in polymer dynamics adds to the probability of success of this work.
