Effects of attractive colloids on the phase separation behaviors of binary polymer blends

The attractive colloids are added as fillers to control the phase behaviors of binary polymer blends. Because the colloids attract both components in the blends, aggregates are formed by the colloids coated with both kinds of polymer brushes. The aggregation results in two contradictory effects on the phase separation. First, the formation of aggregate decreases the translational entropy, which promotes the phase separation. On the other hand, the phase separation causes the extra free energy penalty due to the stretch of the chains attaching on the colloids, which prevents the phase separation. Furthermore, as the concentration or adsorbability of the colloids increases the local fluctuations within the aggregates become important. This results in a transition from the macro-phase separation to the micro-phase separation and the existence of the Lifshitz point. All of these effects lead to diverse phase behaviors in the polymer nanocomposites system. In present work, these behaviors are studied theoretically by the random phase approximation in a model system.