Preparation and crystallization behaviour of PP/PP-g-MAH/Org-MMT nanocomposite

The melt-direct intercalation method was employed to prepare polypropylene (PP)/maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (PP-g-MAH)/organic-montmorillonite (Org-MMT), X-ray diffractometer was used to investigate the intercalation effect and crystallite size in composites and TEM micrograph to observe the dispersion of Org-MMT interlayers in polypropylene. The results showed that by introducing maleated polypropylene in PP/Org-MMT composite, macromolecule segments had intercalated into interlayer space of Org-MMT. As a result, Org-MMT interlayers were dispersed evenly in polypropylene and PP/PP-g-MAH/Org-MMT nanocomposite was synthesized. The crystallite size of nanocomposite perpendicular to the crystalline plane such as (0 4 0), (13 0), (111), (0 4 1) is smaller than that of pristine PP, which indicated that the crystallite size of PP in nanocomposite can be diminished by adding PP-g-MAH and Org-MMT in PP. Moreover, the nonisothermal crystallization kinetics of PP and PP/PP-g-MAH/Org-MMT nanocomposite was investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) with various cooling rates. The Avrami analysis modified by Jeziorny, Ozawa method and a method developed by Liu were employed to describe the nonisothermal crystallization process of these samples. The difference in the exponent n between PP and nanocomposite, indicated that nonisothermal kinetic crystallization corresponded to tridimensional growth with heterogeneous nucleation. The values of half-time, Z(c), F(T) and K(T) showed that the crystallization rate of composites was faster than that of PP at a given cooling rate. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.