Preparation And Characterization Of Polypropylene/Attapulgite Nano Composites

The development and status of the modification of polypropene(PP)have been reviewed in this paper. The main purpose of this work is focused on preparing composites with better performance via blending PP with Attapulgite(ATP), studying the relationship between structure and Properties. We used the method of Solution-Compound and Melt-Blending to prepare the PP/ATPcomposite.ATP was pretreated in three different ways: modified by silane coupling agent, blending with irregular polypropylene, enveloped by Polyethylene oxide. The nanocomposite prepared by pre-enveloping of Polyethylene oxide gives the highest mechanical properties. Scan electron microscope (SEM) results reveal that The diameter of treated ATP unit have no obvious change,The length-to-diameter factor has a litter reduced.the specific surface area turned small obviously by test of BET and the most of mesopore dissapeerde.The properties of the composite of 3 wt% ATP content were compared with those of pure PP. The impact strength of the composite was increased by 83%, and the tensile strength and flexural strength was increased by 6～11% and 33～45% respectively. Scan electron microscope (SEM) results reveal that ATP disperses homogeneously in the PP matrix and mainly exists as anomocytic crystal bundles. The diameter of treated ATP unit is in the range of 20～40 nm. X-ray diffraction (XRD) shows that PP was kept asα-PP crystalline in the composition, and no crystalline phase transition occurs as reported in literature. ATPs pretreated by silane coupling agent and irregular polypropylene show obvious grain refinement, while ATP pretreated by Polyethylene oxide does not show such effect. Dynamic mechanical analysis and the results of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) reflect that the addition of ATP can increase the crystallization temperature and crystallization of PP/ATP. The addition of ATP gives nucleation effect and ATP pretreated by Polyethylene oxide shows the best effect on improving the crystallization of PP.The result of PLM showed that the crystal size of PP decreased, whenATP were added into the matrix.