OBTAINING AND STUDYING THE PROPERTIES OF NANOCOMPOSITES BASED ON A MIXTURE OF HIGH AND LOW PRESSURE POLYETHYLENE WITH METAL-CONTAINING NANOFILLERS

Abstract

The effect of additives of nanofillers (NF) containing nanoparticles of copper (I) oxides stabilized by a polymer matrix of high-pressure polyethylene (PE) obtained by the mechano-chemical method on the structure and properties of metal-containing nanocomposites based on a mixture of high- and low-pressure polyethylene has been studied by differential thermal (DTA), X-ray phase (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses. It is shown that the introduction into the composition of 0.3 – 0.5 wt.% NF leads to an increase in the strength index from16.69 to 19.77 MPa and the amount of deformation at break of the composite by 1.7 times, which is apparently due to the synergistic effect re-lated to the interfacial interaction of copper-containing nanoparticles in the LDPE matrix with the components of LDPE/HDPE composition , the mutual influence of which contributes to an increase in both the amount of deformation and the strength index. The study of the thermal properties of the samples has showed that the introduction of NF containing copper(I) oxide NPs into the composition of mixed polyethylene contributes to a significant increase in the decay temperature of the samples, and the activation energy of the decay of the thermo-oxidative destruction of the resulting nanocomposite increases from 232 to 255 kJ /mol. The results obtained indicate that small amounts of nanofillers (0.3-0.5wt. %), introduced into the polymer, obviously play the role of structurizers - artificial nuclei of crystallization, which contributes to the appearance of a fine-spherulite structure in the polymer, characterized by improved physico-mechanical and thermal properties of the resulting nanocomposite