Investigation of Transport Mechanism and Nanostructure of Nylon-6,6/PVA Blend Polymers

A casting technique was used to prepare poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) blend polymers with different concentrations of Nylon-6,6 to increase the free-volume size and control the ionic conductivity of the blended polymers. The thermal activation energy for some blends is lower than that of pure polymers, indicating that their thermal stability is somewhere in between that of pure Nylon-6,6 and pure PVA. The degree of crystallinity of the blend sample (25.7%) was lower than that of the pure components (41.0 and 31.6% for pure Nylon-6,6 and PVA, respectively). The dielectric properties of the blended samples were investigated for different frequencies (50 Hz-5 MHz). The σ_ac versus frequency was found to obey Jonscher's universal power law. The calculated values of the s parameter were increased from 0.53 to 0.783 for 0 and 100 wt.% Nylon-6,6, respectively, and values less than 1 indicate the hopping conduction mechanism. The barrier height (Wm) was found to increase from 0.33 to 0.72 for 0 and 100 wt.% Nylon-6,6, respectively. The ionic conductivity decreases as the concentration of Nylon-6,6 is blended into PVA because increasing the Nylon-6,6 concentration reduces the number of mobile charge carriers. Positron annihilation lifetime (PAL) spectroscopy was used to investigate the free volume's nanostructure. The hole volume size grows exponentially with the concentration of Nylon-6,6 mixed with PVA. The Nylon-6,6/PVA blends' free-volume distribution indicates that there is no phase separation in the blended samples. Mixing PVA and Nylon-6,6 resulted in a negative deviation (miscible blends), as evidenced by the interaction parameter's negative value. The strong correlation between the free-volume size and other macroscopic properties like ionic conductivity suggests that the free-volume size influences these macroscopic properties.