COMPARISON OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF DIFFERENT BASIC FUNCTIONAL-GROUP FOR THE REACTIVE COMPATIBILIZATION OF POLYMER BLENDS

Reactive compatibilization of immiscible polymer blends has been attracting a very considerable research interest in the past few years. While a wide variety of functionalized polymers having acidic groups are commercially available, potentially reactive polymers containing basic functional groups have rarely been developed. In this study, glycidyl methacrylate (GMA), 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA), 2-hydroxypropyl methacrylate (HPMA), t-butylaminoethyl methacrylate (TBAEMA), dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA), and 2-isopropenyl-2-oxazoline (IPO) were melt grafted onto a polypropylene (PP) homopolymer. The effectiveness of these functionalized PPs as compatibilizers for PP/(acrylonitrile-co-butadiene-co-acrylic acid) rubber (NBR) blends was evaluated in terms of improvement in impact properties and blend morphology. It has been found that IPO and GMA are effective in compatibilizing the PP/NBR blends, with a nine-fold improvement in impact energy over pure PP and an uncompatibilized PP/NBR blend. The other functional groups are much less effective for the blend system where carboxylic acid is the coreactive group.