Silicone materials may be incorporated into organic thermoplastic resins to provide enhanced properties. Good dispersion of silicone with plastics is believed to be one of the keys to control the applications of these multiphase blends. In this study, we investigated the morphologies of mechanically mixed silicone/organic blends using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Results provide an important piece of information that the optimum silicone phase dispersion can be achieved by matching the viscosities of the blend components.

Most silicone and organic polymers are thermodynamically immiscible, forming multiphase structures for their blends. For example, a blend consisting of 90 wt% polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and 10% low density polyethylene (LDPE) was revealed by SEM to have a multiphase structure shown in Figure 1A where the PDMS was a Dow Corning® 3-5016 silanol-terminated siloxane fluid that forms the dispersed phase and the LDPE a Dow Chemical polyethylene having a melt index of 4.