Nonisothermal Crystallization Kinetics of Polypropylene/Attapulgite Nanocomposites

Abstract

This paper studies the nonisothermal crystallization kinetics of polypropylene (PP) and polypropylene/organic‐attapulgite (PP/org‐ATP) nanocomposites by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) at various cooling rates. Several different analysis methods were used to describe the process of nonisothermal crystallization. The results show that the treatment of Jeziorny and Mo could describe the nonisothermal crystallization of the nanocomposites very well. The attapulgite has a remarkable heterogeneous nucleation effect in the PP matrix. The values of half‐time and Zt for PP/ATP nanocomposites were much smaller than those for PP at a given cooling rate. The activation energy was determined by the Kissinger method, and the values were 187.8 and 153.2 kJ/mol for PP and PP/ATP nanocomposites, respectively. In a manner similar to the isothermal crystallization process, the addition of organo‐attapulgite accelerates the nonisothermal crystallization process.