A solid
skin layer inevitably forms on the foam surface
for supercritical
carbon dioxide (sc-CO2) foaming technology, leading to
deterioration of some inherent properties of polymeric foams. In this
work, skinless polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) foam was fabricated with
a surface-constrained sc-CO2 foaming method by innovatively
constructing aligned epoxy resin/ferromagnetic graphene oxide composites
(EP/GO@Fe3O4) as a CO2 barrier layer
under a magnetic field. Introduction of GO@Fe3O4 and its ordered alignment led to an obvious decrease in the CO2 permeability coefficient of the barrier layer, a significant
increase of the CO2 concentration in the PPS matrix, and
a decrease of desorption diffusivity in the depressurization stage,
suggesting that the composite layers effectively inhibited the escape
of CO2 dissolved in the matrix. Meanwhile, the strong interfacial
interaction between the composite layer and the PPS matrix remarkably
enhanced the heterogeneous nucleation of cells at the interface, resulting
in elimination of the solid skin layer and formation of an obvious
cellular structure on the foam surface. Moreover, by the alignment
of GO@Fe3O4 in EP, the CO2 permeability
coefficient of the barrier layer became much lower, and the cell density
on the foam surface further increased with decreasing cell size, which
was even higher than that of the cross section of foam, attributed
to stronger heterogeneous nucleation at the interface than the homogeneous
nucleation in the core region of the sample. As a result, the thermal
conductivity of the skinless PPS foam reached as low as 0.0365 W/m·k,
decreasing by 49.5% compared with that of regular PPS foam, showing
a remarkable improvement in the thermal insulation properties of PPS
foam. This work provided a novel and effective method for fabricating
skinless PPS foam with enhanced thermal insulation properties.