Novel reactive compatibilization strategy on immiscible polypropylene and polystyrene blend

Abstract

Polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS) are immiscible and incompatible. Since both PP and PS components possess no reactive functional group, reactive compatibilization of a PP/PS blend is impossible unless certain reactive functional groups are imparted to either PP or PS. In this study we provide a simple approach to reactively compatibilize the nonreactive PP/PS blend system by physically functionalizing PP and PS with the addition of maleic anhydride grafted PP (PP-g-MA) and styrene maleic anhydride random copolymer (SMA), respectively. An epoxy monomer, serving as a coupler and possessing four epoxy groups able to react with the maleic anhydride of PP-g-MA and SMA, was then added during melt blending. Observations of the finer PS domain sizes and improved mechanical properties support the plausibility of reactive compatibilization of this nonreactive PP/PS blend by combining physically functionalized PP and PS with tetra-glycidyl ether of diphenyl diamino methane (TGDDM) in a one-step extrusion process.

Mistura polipropileno/poliestireno: um exemplo da relação processamento-estrutura-propriedade no ensino de polímeros

“…Nesta área, a mistura de polipropileno e poliestireno é uma das mais estudadas principalmente pelo baixo custo e relevância tecnológica destes materiais [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] . Por outro lado, a compreensão das relações processamentoestrutura-propriedade em misturas poliméricas de sistemas conhecido pode ser, e frequentemente é utilizado para explicar os comportamentos observados em sistemas poliméricos mais complexos.…”

Affine‐invariant character recognition by progressive removing

“…The tensile strength and tensile modulus increases with increasing percentage of compatibilizer up to 15% and then decreases. This may be because of the lower interfacial tension and enhanced interfacial adhesion of the compatibilized blends, making stress transfer more efficient between phases during fracture [34]. The improvement in tensile strength and tensile modulus is as much as 18% and 10% when compared with the pure blend (PB).…”

The supermolecular structure of isotactic polypropylene/atactic polystyrene blends

“…iPP and PS are immiscible, and much work on compatibilizing the iPP/PS blends has been done using styrene‐butadiene‐styrene (SBS), styrene‐ethylene‐butylene‐styrene (SEBS), styrene‐ethylene/propylene (SEP), styrene‐isoprene‐styrene and poly(propylene‐g‐styrene) (PP‐g‐PS) copolymer as nonreactive compatibilizer [2, 3, 7, 10–16]. However, relatively few studies on reactive compatibilization of the iPP/PS blend have been reported because of lack of functional groups in both iPP and PS [17]. Compatibilization by the addition of third component can significantly improve the mechanical properties of the blend by reducing the dispersed phase domain size and by enhancing phase adhesion [15, 18–21].…”

“…Most of the work [1, 2, 5, 10, 14, 17] reported on iPP/PS blends has been related mainly to mechanical and the rheological properties and on phase dimensions, especially the size of dispersed particles. It is well known that crystallization and polymorphism of polypropylene is of great technological importance due to the mechanical properties imparted, which ultimately result from the change in molecular conformation, and crystallization in semicrystalline polymers can have a dramatic impact on the mechanical properties and hence is important to final application.…”