Effects of Reactive Blending on Phase Morphology

Reactive blending is an important technique which is very frequently used for control of the phase morphology, phase stabilization and interfacial adhesion in multiphase immiscible polymer blends. Recently a lot of attention has been focused on the reactive blending process in order to understand how phase morphology develops in reactively compatibilized blends. The stability of the in situ formed copol3aner at the interface and its influence on phase morphology generation, phase co-continuity and on the crystallization behavior of the ciystallizable component(s) are crucial aspects with respect to the blend material properties. 

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Effect of Reactive Blending on Phase Morphology Generation. 53... 

The reactive compatibilization of HDPE-NBR and PP-NBR blends has been studied by Thomas and coworkers [75,76]. The maleic anhydride modified polyolefins and phenolic modified polyolefins are used as com-patibilizers. The effect of the concentration of these compatibilizers on the compatibility of these blends was investigated in terms of morphology and mechanical properties. It was found that in these blends an optimum quantity of the compatibilizer was required to obtain maximum improvement in properties, and after that a leveling off was observed. The domain size of the dispersed NBR phase in these blends is decreased up to a certain level and then increases (Fig. 12 and 13). The reduction in domain size is attributed to the increase in... 

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