Impact of compatibilization on polypropylene (PP) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) blend: A review

Abstract

In this review we have summarize, the compatibilization process, potential applications, and future aspects of polypropylene (PP) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) blend. The effect of several compatibilizers such as organic/inorganic compounds, nanomaterials, or a combination of more than one compatibilizers is presented. Whenever a pair of polymers are blended together, the physical and chemical characteristics of the blend are tested to identify whether the combination is compatible or incompatible. Compatibility between constituent polymers influences the overall property of blended polymers, such as mechanical strength, thermal behaviour, morphology, flow behavior, and rheology. Homogeneous mixing of polymer component is essential and for this purpose twin-screw extruders (TSE) are superior as compared to single-screw extruders (SSE). However, in some cases chain scission occurred during the extrusion process due to high shear stress and long residence time of TSE. SSE is unable to perform homogeneous mixing mainly in case of chemically inert thermoplastics. PP and ABS are inert thermoplastics, difficult to mix with each other due to the high interfacial tension. Adding an appropriate compatibilizer can significantly improve the interfacial adhesion. Here, the influence of compatibilizer, compatibilization process and technique of blending on PP/ABS blends are reported systematically. Also, effect on tensile strength and modulus, flexural strength, impact strength, elongation at break, melting temperature, glass transition temperature, crystallinity, miscibility, electrical conductivity, dielectric constant, and morphology of the blended material are summarised and compared (Mourad, 2010 [1]; Chen et al., 2011 [2]).