Polystyrene rubber toughening

Toughened polystyrene rubber modified polystyrene rubber toughened polystyrene. 

We have considerable latitude when it comes to choosing the chemical composition of rubber toughened polystyrene. Suitable unsaturated rubbers include styrene-butadiene copolymers, cis 1,4 polybutadiene, and ethylene-propylene-diene copolymers. Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene is a more complex type of block copolymer. It is made by swelling polybutadiene with styrene and acrylonitrile, then initiating copolymerization. This typically takes place in an emulsion polymerization process. 

Rubber toughened polystyrene is widely used in electronic and kitchen appliances. This type of application requires a good balance of stiffness, impact resistance, and ready coloration. Telephones, which are frequently dropped, are an excellent example of the benefits of rubber toughened polystyrene. The high surface gloss that we desire is obtained by minimizing the size of the rubber particles. Larger items, such as canoes, can be thermoformed from extruded sheet. 

Rubber-toughened polystyrene composites were obtained similarly by polymerising the dispersed phase of a styrene/SBS solution o/w HIPE [171], or a styrene/MMA/(SBS or butyl methacrylate) o/w HIPE [172], The latter materials were found to be tougher, however, all polymer composites had mechanical properties comparable to bulk materials. Other rubber composite materials have been prepared from PVC and poly(butyl methacrylate) (PBMA) [173], via three routes a) blending partially polymerised o/w HIPEs of vi-nylidene chloride (VDC) and BMA, followed by complete polymerisation b) employing a solution of PBMA in VDC as the dispersed phase, with subsequent polymerisation and c) blending partially polymerised VDC HIPE with BMA monomer, then polymerisation. All materials obtained possessed mixtures of both homopolymers plus some copolymer, and had better mechanical properties than the linear copolymers. The third method was found to produce the best material. 

The technical and commercial success of high impact polystyrene (HIPS) and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) has led to a widespread research program on the use of rubbers as toughening agents for plastics. There is now an impressive 11st of rubber-toughened polymers including both amorphous and... 

A blend was prepared by dissolving a rubber material in styrene and polymerizing the system. The blend contains not only rubber and polystyrene (PS), but also a graft polymer because of the attachment of short polystyrene side chains to the rubber molecules. The toughness of this material was markedly improved compared to that of the unmodified PS. A technology based on bulk polymerization [26] has been widely used the concentrated emulsion polymerization method employed by us, however, allows one to obtain rubber toughened latexes. 

A variation of the HIPS process uses diblock polybutadiene-polystyrene rubbers to produce core-shell rubber particles with polystyrene cores and thin polybutadiene shells. The small particle size of 0.1 to 0.4 pm is less than optimum for toughening but provides a high-gloss material. 

An additional problem arises in attenqiting to predict the moduli of rubber-modified dastics the rubber particles are themselves composite in structure. A typfeal hi inqiact polystyrene (HIPS) m t contain only 6 v(d.% of pcdybutadi-ene, whereas the volume fraction of rubber particles is between 20 and 30%. The additional vcdume comes from sniall sub-inclusions of polystyrene (PS) embedded in the rubber. The problem of relating modulus to structure in rubber-toughened plastics is discussed in a recent review ). 

Phase-separated polymers are of practical importance. An example is the way that a brittle polymer such as polystyrene may be toughened by the addition of an incompatible rubber that undergoes phase separation. Provided that this is done with attention to the interface between the two phases, a rubber-toughened high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) will result. 

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