ABSTRACT
The blending process generally starts with the components in the form of pellets of 3 mm or powder of 0.2 µm in approximate size. However, the target morphologies for the nal product often require domain sizes in the range of 0.1 to 10 µm in order to achieve superior performance characteristics. This means that a size reduction of about three orders of magnitude is imposed on the initially introduced components in the mixing equipment [1]. Phase morphology development in immiscible polymer blends can be considered as the big change in dimension and shape the components undergo during their transformation and compounding operations. The minor phase in an immiscible polymer blend in the melt is deformable, as opposed to composite materials, which contain a rigid minor phase. Depending on the components characteristics and the blending conditions, a wide range of sizes and shapes (spherical, ellipsoidal, cylindrical, ribbon-like, sheet, platelet, cocontinuous, etc.) can thus be obtained for the dispersed phase during processing [2,3]. The nal phase morphology in a blend is the result of a balance between deformationdisintegration phenomena and coalescence.
