Simple hot water treatment to form nanostructures for the preparation of polyphenylene sulfide-aluminum alloy hybrids

Abstract

ABSTRACT Polymer-metal hybrids (PMH) are providing the driving force for the development of automotive lightweighting. In this paper, the surface of aluminum (Al) alloy was modified by a simple, environmentally friendly surface treatment technique (hot water treatment) to form certain nanostructures. Polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) was attached to the treated Al surface by an injection molding process to fabricate PPS-Al hybrids. The nanostructures formed on the aluminum surface by hot water treatment were found to be composed of AlOOH, thus the Al surface acquires better wettability properties. With increasing treatment temperature and treatment time, the nanostructures were continuously increasing and becoming larger in scale, but with a consequent decrease in stability. Therefore, when the treatment temperature was 70°C and the treatment time was 10 min, the medium-scale AlOOH formed the strongest mechanical anchoring effect with PPS. The joining strength of the PPS-Al hybrid was enhanced by 200% against the hybrid prepared by sandpaper sanding treatment, which reached 12.16 MPa. After tensile failure, the failure mode of the hot water-treated hybrids was a mixed failure mode of interfacial failure and polymer cohesion destruction. In short, these results provide insights for the preparation of environmentally friendly PMH products.