The effect of injection molding conditions on the near-surface rubber morphology, surface chemistry, and adhesion performance of semi-crystalline and amorphous polymers

This thesis investigated the effect of injection molding processing variables, resin formulation and mold material on the resulting morphology and properties of semi-crystalline and amorphous polymers in parts molded on large presses with fully developed flow.;Five different polymer resins and two different coating types were investigated, and the near-surface morphology was found to be dependent on material formulation, processing parameters, and geometry. For painted TPO, changes in the near-surface rubber morphology and surface chemistry based on material and processing conditions had no significant effect on the adhesion performance. For metal plated ABS, the adhesion performance was found to be heavily dependent on the rubber surface morphology, which varied with material formulation and processing conditions.;One of the most significant findings was that forged aluminum injection molding tooling had little effect on the surface morphology or adhesion performance of either polypropylene or the two TPO formulations examined, despite the five-fold increase in thermal conductivity over traditional tool steel. Surface chemistry, however, was found to be affected by cooling rate, depending on material formulation. A UV stabilizer additive was found concentrated at 2.5 atomic percent on the surface of the aluminum molded part, but not the steel molded part, demonstrating a possible opportunity for using additives and aluminum tooling to create "designer surfaces".;Processing conditions were found to have a competing role in metal plated ABS, where conditions that lowered surface stress and improved adhesion by a factor of 15 also increased the amount of bulk molded-in stress by nearly 7%. Both factors were found to play an important role in adhesion performance due to the effect of surface stress on the quality of the resulting etch structure. The bulk stress must be minimized to due to the large mechanical and thermal mismatch between the polymer and metal layers.;This work provides a more in-depth understanding of the effect of processing and material composition on morphology, surface chemistry, molded-in stress and adhesion. This will establish guidelines for future injection molded part designs to alleviate delamination failures and minimize warp, as well as contribute to modeling predictions of shrink and mechanical behavior.