Thermoreversible gel formation in poly(ethylene terephthalate)/epoxy resin solutions

✍ Scribed by Gending Ji; Gi Xue; Xining Zhang; Bo Liu; Dongshan Zhou; Xinhong Gu

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 565 KB
• Volume: 197
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1022-1352
• DOI: 10.1002/macp.1996.021970706

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The thermoreversible gelation of solutions of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) in liquid diglycidyl ether of bisphenol‐A epoxy resin has been investigated. The critical polymer concentration for gel formation is 10 wt.‐%. The solutions were found to solidify rapidly into gels on cooling. Polarized light microscopy (PLM) and small‐angle light scattering (SALS) studies showed that these gels contain many large, regular PET spherulites. The gels in this system may be formed according to two consecutive processes: first the liquid‐liquid phase separation, and second the crystallization of PET in polymer‐rich domains. Hence, gelation occurs by formation of a three‐dimensional PET network in the epoxy solvent, where the nodes of the network are PET spherulites.