Modification of polypropylene, blending with resole type phenol-formaldehyde resins

✍ Scribed by Wen-Yen Chiang; Wen-Chao Wu; Béla Pukánszky

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 645 KB
• Volume: 30
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0014-3057
• DOI: 10.1016/0014-3057(94)90063-9

✦ Synopsis

Resole type phenolic prepolymers were prepared with phenol, p-cresol, p-t-butylphenol and p-nonylphenol as the phenolic component. Small amounts of the prepolymers were blended with PP and structure, mechanical properties, electric and dielectric characteristics, as well as mould shrinkage of the blends were determined. The phenolic resin is dispersed as fine particles in the PP matrix and SEM studies indicate good adhesion between the components. In spite of the small amount of phenolic resin in the blend--max. 4 wt%--significant improvement of some of the properties, especially impact strength, was observed. Analysis of experimental data, calculation of interfacial interaction and comparison with literature data indicate that during homogenization chemical reactions take place between PP and the phenolic prepolymer. According to the analysis the reactions go through chinon methides and other chinoidal transformation compounds forming during resin cure.

Although the presented tentative explanation must be verified with further experiments, the reaction of the components opens up new possibilities in PP modification.