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Polymers and Polymer Composites

Study on thermal stability and non-isothermal crystallization behaviour of polyethylene/clay nanocomposites

August 1, 2015 By: Fu-An He; Li-Ming Zhang Research article

Title: Study on thermal stability and non-isothermal crystallization behaviour of polyethylene/clay nanocomposites
Page Range: p.545-554
Author(s): Fu-An He; Li-Ming Zhang
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Journal: Polymers and Polymer Composites
Issue Year: ppc
Volume: 23
Issue No: No.8

Abstract
In this work, thermal stability and non-isothermal crystallisation behaviour of polyethylene/clay nanocomposites prepared by in-situ polymerisation were studied. The thermal degradation kinetics of polyethylene/clay nanocomposites in nitrogen was investigated by a pseudo-first order method indicating that the addition of clay filler in polyethylene matrix could improve the thermal stability of nanocomposites. The Ozawa, Avrami, and modified Avrami-Ozawa methods were applied to study the non-isothermal crystallisation behaviour of polyethylene/clay nanocomposite. It was found that the clay filler not only acted as a heterogeneous nucleation for the crystallisation of polyethylene but also hindered the transport of the polyethylene molecule chains at the same time, resulting in a decrease of the crystallisation growth rate of polyethylene with clay loading. In addition, the nucleation activity and the activation energy for the crystallisation of polyethylene/clay nanocomposites were also estimated. 39 Refs.

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