Interaction of polydimethylsiloxanes with swelling agents

Abstract The swelling of a crosslinked polydimethylsiloxane in a number of swelling agents has been measured. Values of the solvent‐polymer interaction parameter, χ 1 , have been computed and have been compared with the solubility parameters of the swelling agents and with other data from the literature. The magnitude of the solubility parameter of the polymer depends markedly on the swelling agents and method used for its estimation. The values reported here range from 7.7 to 5.03.