## 2 Results and Discussion
### Structural Characterization of the PSt-I-PDMS and PSt-I-PDMS/DVB Conetworks  
In order to reveal the structural arrangements of the transparent PSt-\(l\)-PDMS and PSt-\(l\)-PDMS/DVB conetworks, composed of macroscopically immiscible PSt and PDMS, DSC, SAXS and AFM measurements were carried out. As displayed in Figure 2, the DSC traces indicate glass transition for both the PDMS and PSt components, with the exception of the conetwork with 5:1 St/DVB weight ratio. The absence of glass transition in this case is due to the significantly high crosslinking density. A similar observation was made with all the investigated conetworks. As shown in Figure 2A, the MA-PDMS-MA homopolymer has a glass transition at \(-126\)\({}^{\circ}\)C, a cold-crystallization exotherm peak at \(-70\)\({}^{\circ}\)C, and a melting endotherm peak at \(-43\)\({}^{\circ}\)C, which are consistent with reported data [109]. In the conetwork samples, the glass transition temperature (\(T_{\text{g}}\)) of the PDMS component is in the same range (\(-120\)\({}^{\circ}\)C). However, the exotherm and endotherm peaks are absent. This indicates that the PDMS chains cannot crystallize within the conetworks. Similar findings, i.e., suppression of the crystallization of semicrystalline components in conetworks, were reported for several other conetworks as well [82; 110; 111; 112], indicating that this is a common phenomenon in polymer conetworks. The DSC curves in the range of the glass transition temperature of the PSt homopolymer are shown in Figure 2B. The \(T_{\text{g}}\)S of the polystyrene component in the conetworks were detectable for samples synthesized without DVB or with 36:1 St/DVB weight ratio. The glass transition temperatures of PSt in the conetworks are lower than that of the PSt homopolymer, which is in accordance with results reported for other conetworks prepared by the macromonomer method [83; 91; 111; 112]. As displayed in Figure 2A,B, the DSC curves of the PSt-\(l\)-PDMS and PSt-\(l\)-PDMS/DVB conetwork samples (with a 36:1 St/DVB weight ratio) exhibit two distinct glass transitions: one near the \(T_{\text{g}}\) of PDMS and another near to the \(T_{\text{g}}\) of PSt. These results clearly indicate that PDMS and PSt form separate domains within the conetworks. Considering that all conetworks are fully transparent, the sizes of the separate domains are expected to be in the range below the wavelength of the visible light. As shown in Figure 3, the SAXS curves consistently exhibit a single peak, indicative of disordered phase separation within the samples. Notably, the maxima of these curves are shifted towards larger values of the scattering vector (\(q\)) with increasing PDMS content. Deeper data analysis revealed that the \(d\)-spacing (average domain spacing), defined as \(d=2\pi/q_{\text{max}}\), is composition-dependent. For the PSt-\(l\)-PDMS conetworks, it ranges from 11.7 to 16.7 nm. In contrast, the \(d\)-spacing values change from 8.3 to 11.9 nm and from 7.9 to 11.2 nm for conetworks with 36:1 and 5:1 St/DVB weight ratios, respectively, as presented in Table 2 and Figure 4. As shown in Figure 3, the shape of the scattering curves becomes broader with increasing the DVB content. This indicates broader distribution of domain distances in the DVB containing conetworks, on the one hand. On the other hand, the \(d\)-spacing is almost the same for both conetworks containing DVB, while it is higher for the PSt-\(l\)-PDMS conetworks by \(\sim\)3-6 nm than that for the PSt-\(l\)-PDMS/DVB samples. These findings clearly indicate that both the PSt-\(l\)-PDMS and PSt-\(l\)-PDMS/DVB conetworks possess nanophase separated morphology with \(d\)-spacing in the 8-17 nm range, which is consistent with the transparency of all these conetworks, i.e., these conetworks are composed of separate PSt and PDMS nanodomains. The absence of higher order peaks in the SAXS curves indicates the absence of detectable long-range ordering, that is, it can be concluded that all the investigated conetworks possess disordered nanophasic morphology.