NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN REACTIVE PROCESSING OF THERMOPLASTIC COMPOSITES

Department of Plastics and Rubber, Faculty of Chemical Technology, Slovak Technical University, Slovak Republic Pulp and Paper Research Center, University of Quebec, Trois-Rivieres, PQ, Canada 

Significant development of particulate polymer composites which is drawing world-wide attention nowadays, is oriented to prepare easily processible, economically effective and ecologically viable materials with improved application properties. 

While unique properties, such as dimensional stability or increased hardness and modulus, are the usual motivation for exploiting particulate filled composites, special attention must be paid to other mechanical properties, such as yield and ultimate strength and fracture toughness [1 ]. Due to the low adhesion between non-polar hydrophobic polymer matrix and hydrophilic filler surface, the interfacial debonding is very frequently the first step of failure in these materials [2]. Mainly for this reason the effective application of particulate composites is first of all determined by the interfacial interaction between polymer and filler. 

More recently, reactive extrusion under an inert atmosphere was found to be very effective to minimize the side effects of composites prepared by in-situ reactive processing [14]. The economic feasibility of such processes are recently questioned due to the involvement of multistage 

Because the preparation of maleated polyolefin involves a separate stage different from a composite processing stage the process does not enjoy the maximum economic benefit that could be obtained by using a reactive 

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