Effect of Compatibilizer on the Interface Bonding of Graphene Oxide and Polypropylene Composite Fibers

Graphene oxide (GO) is an ideal polymer nano-matrix composite fiber additive. In order to improve the interfacial bonding and thermal stability of GO and PP composite fibers, it is a simple and effective method to add polypropylene (PP-g-MAH) grafted with maleic anhydride as compatibilizer.

In this paper, the composite were prepared by melting blending with PP as matrix, GO as reinforcement and PP-g-MAH as compatibilizer and named PP/MAH/GO-x, where x represents the GO weight percentage composites containing 0.0~0.5wt% GO. The interfacial bonding properties, thermal properties, mechanical properties and morphology characteristics of the composites were studied.

Fig. 1 is the SEM image of low temperature fracture interface of the three fibers; Fig. 1a is the SEM of pure PP with rough fracture interface; Fig. 1b is the SEM of PP/GO with smooth section, indicating poor compatibility between PP and GO and the appearance of GO agglomerations; Fig. 1c is the SEM of PP/MAH/GO-3 with very rough interface.It shows that the compatibility is greatly improved compared with PP/GO.

Fig. 1 SEM image of low temperature fracture interface of the three fibers

a.PP；b.PP/GO；c.PP/MAH/GO-3

Fig. 2 shows the crystallization temperature curves of the three fibers.It can be seen from the figure that, compared with pure PP, the crystallization temperature decreases after the addition of compatibilizer, which is because PP-G-MAH increases the compatibility between PP and GO, which reduces the crystallization temperature and makes it difficult to crystallize.However, only adding GO will increase the nuclear ability of PP and make it easier to crystallize.

Fig. 2 crystallization temperature curves of the three fibers