Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

Title

Morphology and Property of Polypropylene/Aliphatic Polyketone Blends

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-1-2002

Abstract

Aliphatic polyketone (PK) contains both non-polar aliphatic units and polar carbonyl groups, which make it an ideal and unique candidate for modifying non-polar polymer systems containing purely alkyl chains,such as polyalkenes. A new polymer blend system based on polypropylene (PP) and aliphatic polyketone has been prepared; PP-PK blends containing 5 and 8 wt-% PK were prepared by the melt blending method. The morphology and structures of the blends were characterised using SEM, DSC, WAXS, FTIR, and TGA. The SEM study indicates that the blends are immiscible in this composition range. They have typical island-sea morphology and the size of the droplets increases as the PK concentration increases. On the fractured surfaces of the blend samples some droplets are partially connected to the matrix, which implies that the interface between the two phases has relatively high strength. The DSC study shows that the blending significantly reduces the crystallinity of both PP and PK. The WAXS result indicates that the crystal size of PP along the b axis is largely reduced in the blends, which implies that a small amount of PK chains may have been incorporated into the matrix,interrupting the growth of the PP crystals. Both FTIR and TGA studies suggest that there are chemical reactions between PP and PK during compounding, which may contribute to the partial miscibility and to the relatively strong interface observed.

Publication Title

Plastics, Rubber and Composites

Volume

31

Issue

4

First Page

147

Last Page

150

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