The preparation of supertoughening poly­(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) blends has always been a practical and valuable task. In our work, PET resins grafted with poly­(acrylic acid) (PAA), termed as PET-g-PAA, were first prepared through γ-ray radiation induced graft polymerization and blended in a partially miscible PET/ethylene-methyl acrylate-glycidyl methacrylate random terpolymer (ST2000) system as the compatibilizer. The impact strength of the PET blends achieves the maximum at a 6 wt % of PET-g-PAA, but without the loss of tensile strength. Furthermore, much less of ST2000 is needed for the blends to possess high impact strength at the existence of PET-g-PAA. The SEM morphological analysis of the impact-fracture surface implies a good interfacial adhesion between ST2000 and PET matrix, which should be ascribed to the effective compatibilization by the in situ formed PET-g-PAA/ST2000 graft copolymer through the reaction between the COOH groups and epoxy groups on ST2000.

A simple method of prelithiation of SiO along with carbon coating to achieve high performance SiO-based materials.

3D inverse opal SnO2/graphene composite microspheres with enhanced photocatalytic activities were first prepared using polystyrene colloidal crystal balls as a template.

The surface modification of graphene oxide (GO) determines the interactions between GO and polymers, which possibly produces a significant impact on the mechanical properties of polymer. Here, GO was first modified with poly­(glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA) and triethylenetetramine (TTA) through γ-ray radiation. Then, a tiny small amount (0.04%) of the prepared modified GO was filled with a PET/ethylene-methyl acrylate-glycidyl methacrylate random terpolymer (PET/ST2000) blend. The morphological analyses on these filled PET blends confirmed that the surface chemical structure of GO had a crucial impact on the mechanical property of the blend. The chemical bonding between GO and ST2000 was more efficient in improving the dispersibility of GO and the compatibility between PET and ST2000, leading to a 2.5-fold increase in the impact strength, along with a slight increase in tensile strength. However, the addition of reduced GO lacking polar groups caused fatal damage in the mechanical property of the blend.