Improvement of the T-peel Strength of Polypropylene Adhesion Joints by Surface Photografting Pre-Treatment with Methyl Methacrylate

Abstract

Although polypropylene is one of the most used polymers at industrial level due to good balanced properties, it presents some restrictions in applications that require good adhesion properties as well as coating and painting. These restrictions are related to its non polar nature which leads to low wetting properties. So that, in most cases, it is necessary a previous surface pre‐treatment in order to improve adhesion properties. These surface treatments could be physical or chemical. Among the wide variety of physical processes, plasma technologies are useful from both technical and environmental points of view. If we take into account economic considerations, chemical processes are interesting due to low cost equipment and procedures. In particular, we have used photografting of methyl methacrylate (MMA) monomer on polypropylene substrates with UV radiation and initiators. This process is useful to promote chemical modification of polypropylene surface by grafting MMA monomers into polypropylene polymer chains. Due to polarity of some groups in MMA monomers, it is possible to increase surface wettability thus promoting a remarkable increase in adhesion properties of polypropylene. In this work, changes in wettability of polypropylene surfaces in terms of the exposure time to UV radiation in presence of MMA monomers and initiators has been investigated. Furthermore, chemical changes have been characterized by FTIR analysis and mechanical performance of adhesion joints has been evaluated by T‐peel tests.