Variation of Ultimate Properties in Extruded iPP-Mesoporous Silica Nanocomposites by Effect of iPP Confinement within the Mesostructures

Abstract

Nanocomposites based on isotactic polypropylene (iPP) and mesoporous silica particles of either MCM-41 or SBA-15 were prepared by melt extrusion. The effect of the silica incorporated into an iPP matrix was firstly detected in the degradation behavior and in the rheological response of the resultant composites. Both were ascribed, in principle, to variations in the inclusion of iPP chains within these two mesostructures, with well different pore size. DSC experiments did not provide information on the existence of confinement in the iPP-MCM-41 materials, whereas a small endotherm, located at about 100 °C and attributed to the melting of confined crystallites, is clearly observed in the iPP-SBA-15 composites. Real-time variable-temperature Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) experiments with synchrotron radiation turned out to be crucial to finding the presence of iPP within MCM-41 pores. From these measurements, precise information was also deduced on the influence of the MCM-41 on iPP long spacing since overlapping does not occur between most probable iPP long spacing peak with the characteristic diffractions from the MCM-41 hexagonal nanostructure in comparison with existing superposition in SBA-15-based materials.