Developments in Reactive Blending

Abstract

Reactive polymer blending has several advantages over simple mechanical blending for the production of polymer blends and alloys. In-situ grafting reactions are some of the most important reactions in reactive blending of different polymers because the in-situ formed graft polymers act as effective compatibilizers in the blend. Research activities on compatibilization of incompatible polymer blends have led to the development of reactive blending of multipolymer components. Blending or mixing is itself already a type of processing procedure, and therefore reactive blending is nothing else but a reactive processing that is very efficient and economical in the production of high performance polymeric materials. Self-vulcanization using random copolymers or telechelic polymers possessing suitable functional groups is also a kind of reactive blending technique. Reactive blending may also be the key technology for the recycling of polymeric materials in which polymers collected as polymer blends must have good quality for second use.