Investigation of the global phase behavior of polymer mixtures in the shield region.

This paper is a contribution of our systematic investigation of the global phase behaviors of the chain molecules mixtures, i.e., polymer mixture solutions. The phase behavior of fluid mixtures is understood by the critical lines in fluid-gas diagrams. The critical lines of binary fluid system may, under circumstances, exhibit closed loops in the critical lines. A distinction is made between free critical loops, as described by type VI in the Scott and van Konynenburg classification, and "rooted" critical loops, as found in the shield region. We define rooted loops as closed critical lines that are attached to the critical line structure by means of unstable critical line. We obtain the rooted loops in the global phase diagrams of the polymer mixture solutions within the framework of a model that combines the lattice gas model of Schouten, ten Seldam and Trappeniers with the Flory-Huggins theory, and we present the influence of the chain length of long molecules on the rooted critical loops. We present the results in the density-density and the temperature (T)-pressure (P) planes in detail.