In this study, a poly(lactic acid) (PLA) with various titanium dioxide (TiO 2) nanoparticles loading were prepared by a manual laboratory mixing method. The effect of TiO 2 nanoparticles on the non-isothermal and the isothermal crystallization behavior of PLA was investigated by polarized optical microscopy (POM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The presence of TiO 2 nanoparticles decreased the spherulite growth rate of PLA, whereas it initiated faster crystallization through the heterogeneous nucleation process as observed by optical microscopy. The results of DSC analyzes confirmed that the TiO 2 nanoparticles act as an efficient nucleating agent for PLA crystallization. The cold crystallization temperature and crystallization half-time of PLA decreased, while the degree of crystallinity of PLA increased in relation to increases of TiO 2 nanoparticles.
Microfibrillated cellulose (MFC) was prepared by controlling the re-precipitation of cellulose prepared in the mixture form of NaOH/Urea solubilized microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) and starch. The cellulose re-precipitation was carried-out in an HCl bath, resulting in a MFC form having relatively lower crystallinity than MCC. The XRD pattern of MFC indicated the partially crystalline structure arising from the imperfect orientation of a cellulose chain obstructed by a starch molecule in the precipitation step. Interestingly, the MFC morphology exhibited a web-like structure with a diameter in the range of 10-20 nm. The water retention value of MFC was extraordinarily high due to its extremely small diameter having high surface area. Further, surface silanization of MFC with organosilane was carried out. Then, the modified MFC was melt-mixed with polypropylene (PP) matrix via a simple melt mixing technique. The morphology and crystallization of the PP/MFC composites were measured. The morphology of organosilane treated MFC exhibited agglomeration of 10 microns in diameter with layered structures arising from the packing of microfibrils. The FTIR spectra showed hydrophobic characteristics of treated MFC observed by the disappearance of original cellulose hydroxyl group and bound water. The crystallinity of treated MFC increased when compared to the untreated MFC, indicating that cellulose chains of unmodified MFC underwent re-orientation occurring in the modification step due to its high crystallinity characteristic. For the PP/MFC-composite containing MFC loading, faster crystallization and higher spherulite growth rate, in case of higher MFC loading, were observed. In addition, the spherulite size decreased with an increase in the crystallization temperature. However, the degree of crystallinity was fairly independent on the MFC-loading. Therefore it can be concluded that the addition of MFC might enable shorter
The influence of titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) nanoparticles on the crystallization behavior of polypropylene was investigated by conventional differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and fast scanning DSC measurements. The data obtained from both methods were estimated for the first time using the Lauritzen-Hoffmann equation to analyze the behavior over a wide cooling range under nonisothermal conditions. This provides more reliable values of nucleation parameters (K g ) and surface free energy (r e ). The variation of the effective energy (DE) was determined with the Kissinger method. Regardless of the cooling rate, both K g and r e indicate the role of titania as a nucleating agent enhances the crystallization rate. However, the DE denotes that TiO 2 acts as an obstacle to the mobility of chain segments at cooling rates below 150 8C/s, while, in contrast, the presence of titania enhances the chain mobility at cooling rates above 150 8C/s.
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