Shear Flow and Relaxation Behaviors of Entangled Viscoelastic Nanorod-Stabilized Immiscible Polymer Blends

To blend and process different high molar mass polymers into multiphase materials, predicting/controlling their morphology and rheological behavior is paramount. Herein, a segmental repulsive potential within the dissipative particle dynamics framework is applied between the polymer bonds in a multiphase scenario to mimic entanglements and address shear flow and relaxation behaviors of blends presenting reptational polymer chain diffusion. More realistic and viscoelastic polymer rheological behavior is recovered and morphological changes upon relaxation can be traced to the relaxation of normal stress. This structure-property relationship applies to both the flow-induced blend microstructure that becomes kinetically trapped by Janus/homogeneous nanorods and blends without any stabilizing agents. By computationally bridging the interfacial microstructure with the rheological behavior of long polymer chains, very sophisticated multiphase nanomaterials could be designed cost-effectively in the future from a mesoscale perspective.