Blend miscibility testing

The miscibility was observed in 2 aspects including thermodynamic properties and topographic investigation. First, the thermodynamic properties of polymer beads were investigated by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). The polymer beads of each group were fragmented into 10 mg and analyze by DSC 204 F1 Phoenix (NETZSCH-Gerätebau GmbH, Selb, Germany). The samples were processed under nitrogen gas with heat rate at 10 °C/min from 0 − 220 °C to erase thermal history and cool down rate at 10 °C/min to 0 °C. The cooling and second heating scans were used to evaluate the material’s ability to crystallize and the glass transition temperatures. The melting temperature of each group was also determined.

The other miscibility aspect was investigated by Scanning electron microscope (SEM). The polymer bead of each group was immersed in liquid nitrogen and later broken into pieces. The fracture surfaces of each specimen group were gold-coated and observed under SEM with JSM-IT300 InTouchScope (Joel Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) at 5000 × magnification.