title: Droplet-cluster transition in sheared polyamide 6-poly(styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene)-polypropylene ternary blends.
abstract: We have used a Linkam CSS 450 stage equipped with an optical microscope to study online the evolution of the morphology and structure of polyamide 6 (PA6)-poly(styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene) (SEBS)-polypropylene (PP) ternary blends under shear flow. At a high shear rate (60 s(-1)), large drops of PA6 and SEBS broke up to form small randomly distributed PA6 droplets covered by SEBS in the PP matrix. These droplets aggregated into a well-ordered structure, i.e., parallel clusters, after decreasing the shear rate abruptly to within the range of 1.5-3.5 s(-1). Interestingly, these parallel clusters were aligned perpendicular to the direction of shear flow. An important feature of these parallel clusters is that they can be maintained for a long period of time (several tens of minutes) at the given shear rate or after cessation of flow; this feature allows us to freeze the structure by decreasing the temperature.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yutian
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Xiaodong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Jinghua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Jiang