Nc. Liu et al., COMPARISON OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF DIFFERENT BASIC FUNCTIONAL-GROUP FOR THE REACTIVE COMPATIBILIZATION OF POLYMER BLENDS, Polymer, 34(22), 1993, pp. 4680-4687
Reactive compatibilization of immiscible polymer blends has been attra
cting a very considerable research interest in the past few years. Whi
le a wide variety of functionalized polymers having acidic groups are
commercially available, potentially reactive polymers containing basic
functional groups have rarely been developed. In this study, glycidyl
methacrylate (GMA), 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA), 2-hydroxyprop
yl methacrylate (HPMA), t-butylaminoethyl methacrylate (TBAEMA), dimet
hylaminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA), and 2-isopropenyl-2-oxazoline (IP
O) were melt grafted onto a polypropylene (PP) homopolymer. The effect
iveness of these functionalized PPs as compatibilizers for PP/(acrylon
itrile-co-butadiene-co-acrylic acid) rubber (NBR) blends was evaluated
in terms of improvement in impact properties and blend morphology. It
has been found that IPO and GMA are effective in compatibilizing the
PP/NBR blends, with a nine-fold improvement in impact energy over pure
PP and an uncompatibilized PP/NBR blend. The other functional groups
are much less effective for the blend system where carboxylic acid is
the coreactive group.