Property enhancement of poly(butylene succinate)/poly(ethyleneglycol‐co‐cyclohexane‐1,4‐dimethanolterephthalate) blends via high‐speed extrusion and in situ fibrillation

Abstract

In the current work, poly(butylene succinate)(PBS)/poly(ethylene glycol-co-cyclohexane-1,4-dimethanolterephthalate) (PETG) blends were first prepared by high-speed extrusion melt processing, and the dependence of the dispersed morphology(phase size) was investigated as function of screw speed. Then, the prepared blends were subjected to a "melt extrusion-uniaxial cold stretching" process to convert the dispersed phase into fibrillar structure, and the diameter change and property enhancement of PBS/PETG blends were further studied. It was found, at fixed ratio of PBS/PETG = 80/20 (wt/wt), the diameters of the PETG was changed from 2.25, 1.29, 1.11, 0.89 μm to 1.13, 0.64, 0.50, 0.38 μm, as increasing the screw speed from 150, 500, 700 rpm to 900 rpm, respectively. In addition, increasing the extrusion speed is favorable not only for smaller but more uniform dispersed phase particles, thus leading to finer microfibrils with narrower diameter distribution after cold stretching. As a result, the yield strength of PBS could be improved from 25.6 to 39.8 MPa for blend obtained via high-speed extrusion and stretching. Our work is important for the preparation of polymer blends with improved property.

Fabrication of Self-Lubricating Porous UHMWPE with Excellent Mechanical Properties and Friction Performance via Rotary Sintering

“…Due to the high viscosity and poor fluidity of UHMWPE, conventional mechanical processing methods are difficult to process, and they are usually formed by special methods, such as thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) [ 26 , 27 , 28 ], thermally induced phase separation stretching (TIPS-S) [ 29 ], melt extrusion stretching [ 30 , 31 ], the nuclear track method [ 32 ], and powder sintering method [ 33 , 34 , 35 ]. Nevertheless, these methods have their deficiencies such as complicated operations, long molding times, and less choice of shape and size of the products.…”