Improving impact toughness of polylactide/poly(ether)urethane blends via designing the phase morphology assisted by hydrophilic silica nanoparticles

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• 作者：Hao Xiu ; Chunmei Huang ; Hongwei Bai ; ^{bhw_168@163.com" class="auth_mail} ; Jia Jiang ; Feng Chen ; Hua Deng ; Ke Wang ; Qin Zhang ; Qiang Fu ; ^{qiangfu@scu.edu.cn" class="auth_mail}
• 关键词：Polylactide ; Nanoparticles ; Impact toughness
• 刊名：Polymer
• 出版年：24 March, 2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：55
• 期：6
• 页码：1593-1600
• 全文大小：3000 K

文摘

Obtaining network-like morphology (rubber particles are unevenly distributed in the matrix, forming a discontinuous rubber network structure) has been considered to be an effective strategy to optimize the toughness of rubber-toughened polymers. However, it is very difficult to achieve using conventional processing method. In this work, taking elastomer-toughened polylactide (PLA) as an example, we attempt to use hydrophilic silica (SiO₂) nanoparticles with self-networking capability to control the phase morphology and the mechanical properties of PLA/poly(ether)urethane (PU) (85/15) blend. It is interesting to find that the selective localization of SiO₂ nanoparticles in the PU phase and at the phase interface induces the morphological change from a common sea-island structure to a unique network-like structure constructed by discrete PU particles with irregular shapes, thus giving rise to a remarkable improvement in the impact toughness of the blend with strength and modulus unaffected. The formation of the network-like structure is attributed to the synergistic effect between the self-networking of the interface-localized SiO₂ and the enhanced elasticity of the SiO₂-localized PU phase. This inspiring result proves the introduction of nanoparticles with self-networking capability into polymers blends to be a universal platform to design their performance via tuning the phase structure.