STABILITY OF BLENDS WITH CO-CONTINUOUS MORPHOLOGIES DURING INJECTION MOLDING

摘要

The morphology in immiscible polymer blends may be unstable during further processing. If the initial morphology is co-continuous, injection molding of the blends that have been compounded in an extruder leads to coarse and irregular structures, whereas droplet/matrix morphologies remain unchanged. The changes are caused by the long residence time in the injection molding machine, which promotes the break-up and retraction of the continuous minor phase. By using a static mixing element in the nozzle both the co-continuous morphology and the original phase dimensions were recovered.