Journal
JOURNAL OF CELLULAR PLASTICS
Volume 54, Issue 3, Pages 483-498Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/0021955X17695096
Keywords
Polypropylene; 1,3,5-benzenetrisamides; nucleation; foam extrusion; supramolecular additives; compression properties
Categories
Funding
- German Research Foundation (DFG)-the Collaborative Research Center [840 (SFB 840)]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Owing to the high lightweight design potential polymer foams become increasingly important. For rigid polymer foams, requiring high dimensional stability under load, a high compression modulus is a key feature. Here, we demonstrate how supramolecular additives can be utilized to control the foam morphology and to significantly improve the compression behavior of extruded foams made of linear isotactic polypropylene. Three different 1,3,5-benzenetrisamides were selected as supramolecular additives. These additives are soluble in the polymer melt and form a supramolecular nanofiber network upon cooling, acting as nucleating sites for both, foam cells and polymer crystals. It is shown that the in situ formed nanofiber network is very effective in reducing the cell size of extruded foams. Depending on the molecular structure and the concentration of the supramolecular additives, the compression modulus of polypropylene-polymer foams can be significantly increased compared to a reference foam with talc. Unexpectedly, an improvement of 100% with a concentration of only 0.02wt% of a supramolecular additive compared to the neat polypropylene foam featuring similar densities is achieved. This improvement cannot be correlated with the foam morphology and is most likely attributed to the presence of the supramolecular nanofiber network.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available