In this work, we study the effect of reactive compatibilization on morphological and rheological properties of immiscible homopolymer blends of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and polyisoprene (PI). The blend systems contained a chemical reaction between amine-functionalized PDMS and maleic anhydride-functionalized PI additives at high temperatures. Interfacially cross-linked compatibilizers obtained with this procedure are investigated through dynamic rheological measurements and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The results show that the interfacial cross-linking constituting strong heterogeneous network is symmetric, as it reduces the sizes of the dispersed phase with higher stability in both compatibilized PI-continuous and PDMS-continuous blends compared to their uncompatibilized counterparts. A complete suppression of droplet coalescence can be concluded due to the superposition of linear viscoelasticity of the reactively compatibilized blends after different shearing protocols. In the previous work [C. DeLeo et al., J. Rheol. 55(4), 713–731 (2011)], however, the weak network at room temperature was found to have an asymmetric effect on the suppression of drop coalescence.

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