Interdiffusion of cyclic polystyrene whose molecular weight is larger than the critical entanglement molecular weight

Interdiffusion of cyclic polystyrene (c-hPS) / cyclic deuterated polystyrene (c-dPS) laminated film whose molecular weights are ca.50 k was examined by neutron reflectivity and dynamic secondary ion mass spectroscopy. It has been found that time evolution of the interfacial thicknesses of (c-hPS/c-dPS) multi-layer films are similar to those of the corresponding linear hPS/linear dPS (l-hPS/l-dPS) bilayer films at short time region. However, at the annealing time longer than 5×10³ s, the interfacial thicknesses of (c-hPS/c-dPS) multi-layer films are evidently larger than those of the (l-hPS/l-dPS) films at each observing time. These results can be explained in terms of the less entanglement nature of cyclic polymers than that of the linear ones.