The effect of a succinic anhydride/succinil-fluoresceine grafted atactic polypropylene on polypropylene/polyamide 6 blends at the polypropylene glass transition as revealed by dynamic mechanical analysis

Abstract

This work deals with a dynamic mechanical analysis study on the effect of a novel interfacial agent containing grafts rather than maleated ones, in all the compositional spectra of the iPP/PA6 system. The interfacial agent used is an atactic polymer (from polymer wastes) with succinic bridges and both backbone and terminal grafted succinil fluoresceine groups (aPP-SF/SA) containing 6.2 % of total grafted groups (2.5% SA and 3.7% SF), equivalent to 6.2 ·10-4 g.mol−1, obtained at the authors’ labs. The effects of both PA6 and aPP-SFSA cause changes in the glass transition temperature (Tg) of iPP in the blend. One of the novelties of the work is introducing an interfacial agent with other groups rather than only maleic anhydride, capable to modify the behavior of the system in a positive, and very different manner, than raditional maleated agents. This has let a better understanding of the interphase between components. In this work we have used dynamic mechanical parameters to evidence the interfacial modifications caused by the presence of aPP-SF/SA in the iPP/PA6 system at the iPP Tg. Besides, by considering each component of the blend as interacting each other, we have used a Box-Wilson model by resembling the so called “agent based models” to obtain algorithms capable to make forecasts of the dynamic mechanical parameters (storage, E’, and loss moduli, E’’, at the glass transition of iPP, in all the composition range of whatever iPP/PA6/aPP-SFSA modified blend.