Studies on Morphology and Mechanical Properties of Dispersing Intercalated Silane Montmorillonite in Polypropylene Matrix

摘要

We used a plastograph-mixer by the twin-screw mixed method to obtain the standard shaped specimens of polymer-clay nanocomposites (PCN) to prepare polypropylene (PP)/silane montmorillonite (MMT) nanocomposites pellets, grafting with two kinds of different surfactant-hard grafting agent maleic anhydride (MA) or soft grafting agent thermoplastic polyolefin elastomers (TPO). The chemical structure and polymer morphology of these as-synthesized PCN specimens were characterized by a wide-angle powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) and a scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In addition, we prepared these experimental specimens in order to probe into their mechanical properties. The tests used were: layer distance of PCN, tensile, impact, shore-hardness, wearing tests, and so on. In addition, we used XRD to make the characterization analysis, and compare it to scatter and layer-distance. It was found that when the MA is increased into the MMT, the layer-distance at 3 wt% increased from 2.11 nm to 3.54 nm; when increasing the TPO into the MMT, layer-distance at 3 wt% increased to the 3.28 nm. For the mechanical property, it was found that these specimens grafted with the MA have the following results: in the tensile test, the MMT weight percentage of 1 wt% had the best result, increasing by 3.2%. In the shore hardness test, the MMT of 3 wt% strengthens by 5.41 %. In addition, the mechanical property of the specimens that grafted to the TPO decreased almost immediately at 1 wt%, but increased at 3-5 Wt% trends.