Two antagonistic effects of flow/mixing on reactive polymer blending

Reactive polymer blending is basically a flow/mixing-driven process of interfacial generation, interfacial reaction for copolymer formation and morphology development. This work shows two antagonistic effects of mixing on this process: while mixing promotes copolymer formation by creating interfaces and enhancing collisions between reactive groups at the interfaces, excessive mixing may pull the in-situ formed copolymer out of the interfaces to one of the two polymer components of the blend, especially when the copolymer becomes highly asymmetrical. As such, the copolymer may loss its compatibilization efficiency. The mixing-driven copolymer pull-out from the interfaces is a catastrophic process (less than a minute), despite the high viscosity of the polymer blend. It depends on the molecular architecture of the reactive compatibilizer, polymer blend composition, mixing intensity and annealing. These findings are obtained using the concept of reactive tracer-compatibilizer and a model reactive polymer blend.

Rheological properties of powder blend for extrusion of ceramic-polymer filament used in 3D printing

The article presents the results of comparative studies of the rheological properties of the ceramic polymer blend of polylactide (PLA) filled with 50 %vol alumina to evaluate the possibility of obtaining extruded filament for 3D printing.

Investigate the Thermal Analysis Properties of Polymer Electrolyte

Propylene carbonate (PC) (1:1) have been used as plasticizer to synthesized two series of polymer blend electrolytes (As and Cs) composed of Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)/Polyacrylonitrile (PAN), (80/20) Wt.% and ethylene carbonate (EC) using solution cast technique. Mixed iodide salts and varying weight ratio of potassium iodide (KI) and cesium iodide (CsI) was used to study the thermal properties of polymer blend electrolytes (GPEs). Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC) results show a decrease in the glass transition of electrolytes when increasing the weight percentage of salts, while the melting point increases due to the reduction in the polymer fluidity. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) indicates that the increase in the thermal stability can be attributed to the high thermal stability of polymer blend and the existence of the strong interaction between the two polymers. The optimum value of glass transition (Ts) is 104.2 °C found in sample containing 35 Wt.% of KI salt which has a melting point (Tm) 194.7 °C.