Co-continuous Nanostructured Blend by Reactive Blending: Incorporation of High Molecular Weight Polymers

Abstract

One of the most challenging issues remaining in the design and the synthesis of robust nanostructured polymers blends is incorporating long crystallizable chains while preserving the co-continuitv of the phases. Here, we demonstrate that by reactive blending of functionalized polyolefin and polyamides such co-continuous structures can be obtained provided that a bimodal mixture of short and long polyamides is used. The short chains react more readily to form graft copolymers that facilitate both grafting of long chains and formation of nanostructures. We discuss different mixing strategies, characterize, and compare reacted products and resulting blend structures.