Novel Tailored Polymeric Surfactant for Dispersing Clay into the Non Polar Polymer

Abstract

Polymers have entropy nearly zero which cause mixing of different polymers or with the fillers become very difficult. There is generally a third component necessary which is called surfactant to enhance the miscibility. The surfactant reduces interfacial tension and improves the interfacial adhesion. In this work, tailored polymeric surfactant is designed and utilized for dispersing the clay in nano scale in to the polymer matrix Polypropylene (PP). These were prepared directly from Na⁺ Bentonite by reactive processing in which melt intercalation technique was carried. They are Polypropylene-g-acrylic amido Poly(oxypropylene) ammonium chloride (POPA). This ammonium salt was prepared from diamine and Polypropylene-g-acrylic acid by the formation of amido amine and sequentially neutralized it with the hydrochloric acid solution. The amido amine formation was verified by the FTIR technique. Clay loading was kept at 5 weight % by this new technique. Their structures were characterized by x-ray diffraction (XRD). The distribution of clay in the matrix was also studied through optical microscope (OM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). These techniques revealed that the polymeric surfactant enhances the dispersion and the dispersed clay is hardly found in the SEM images.

Keywords:

• Clay
• dispersion
• PP
• mechanical properties
• reactive processing