Nonisothermal Crystallization Modeling and Simulation of Polypropylene/Nano Ca3(PO4)2 Composites with Variation in Wt.% of Loading and Reduction in Nanosize

Abstract

Nonisothermal crystallization kinetics of polypropylene (PP)/Ca3(PO4)2 composites was studied using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) for various nanosizes by employing Avrami and Ozawa's combined analysis. Parameters such as Avrami's exponent (n) and composite growth rate constant (Zt) were determined, which characterize the system of different nanosize composites and virgin PP. The relative degree of crystallinity as a function of temperature for PP-nano Ca3(PO4)2 composites at the same cooling rate and sigmoidal shape of curves indicates that there is a strong interaction between PP molecule and nanolayer, which leads to greater nucleation with reduction in nanosizes. A theoretical combination of kinetic equations is found to be suitable to describe the physical phenomena of a real system. The values of parameters n, Zt, and predicted time t for crystallization at a single cooling rate were obtained from the mathematical model.