Blends of polypropylene with poly(cis‐butadiene) rubber. III. Study on the phase structure and morphology of incompatible blends of polypropylene with poly(cis‐butadiene) rubber

Abstract

AbstractScanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to study the structure and morphology of partly compatible binary blends of polypropylene with poly(cis‐butadiene) rubber. The SEM images were transformed by digital image process software designed by our group, and binarized images were obtained. The size (mean diameters dp and characteristic lengths L) of phases was calculated using binarized images. Small‐angle light scattering was employed to study the structure and morphology of phases in the blends. The structural parameters, including correlation distance ac, average chord lengths l, and mean diameter DS to describe the structure and morphology of phases in binary blends, were calculated based on the corresponding theory. The variation of correlation distance ac, average chord length l, and mean diameter DS were the same as that of mean diameters dp and characteristic length L. At the same time, the distribution of sizes of the dispersed phase in binary blends was calculated with graph transition technique, which possessed log‐normal distribution characterization. The power spectrum images corresponding to small‐angle light scattering images were obtained by two‐dimensional fourier transformation of binary images. The correlation distances acf and average chord length lf have been calculated by intensity of power spectrum images and that was the same as ac and l. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 100: 4900–4909, 2006