Baroplastic materials copolymers

GPC measurements of the starting and the recycled baroplastic materials (PI to P8) show no significant change inM and polydispersity indicating that the processing can be carried out without any degradation. The representative GPC traces can be seen in Figure 9 fortri-block copolymer (P2). 

It was also shown that baroplastic materials can be used as a processing aid to process high Tg homopolymer such as polystyrene (PS). To optimize the conditions, polystyrene and baroplastic materials in powder form were blended at different compositions and pressed using compression or extrading at room temperature. The results indicate that a room temperature moldable polystyrene/baroplastic blend can be obtained at 50 wt% baroplastic content with the di-block, tri-block and star-block copolymers. Figure 10 shows that the 50 wt% blend of PS (45K) and 4-arm star-block copolymer (98K, P8) can be... 

Baroplastic di-, tri- and star-block copolymers were shown to act as processing aids in the processing of homo-polystyrene. Detailed studies with different baroplastic materials as processing aids and the mechanical properties of the obtained materials are under investigation. 

Herein, in addition to the existing baroplastics, we have shown that baroplastic tri- and star-block copolymers can be recycled multiple times. For example, recycling of P6 (Figure 8) was achieved by chopping and remolding at 400 kg cm for 30 min which was repeated five times. The fact that the resulting material is still remoldable is an indication of the recyclability of the material. 

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