Study on Thermal Stability and Non-Isothermal Crystallization Behaviour of Polyethylene/Clay Nanocomposites. Issue 8 (October 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: He, Fu-An; Zhang, Li-Ming
• Is Part Of: Polymers and polymer composites. Volume 23:Issue 8(2015)
• Page Start: 545
• Page End: 554
• Publication Date: 2015-10
• Subjects: Polyethylene/clay nanocomposites -- Thermal stability -- Non-isothermal crystallization kinetics; Polymers -- Periodicals; 668.905
• DOI: 10.1177/096739111502300804
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0967-3911

Abstract

In this work, thermal stability and non-isothermal crystallization behaviour of polyethylene/clay nanocomposites prepared by in-situ polymerization 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 crystallization behaviour of polyethylene/clay nanocomposite. It was found that the clay filler not only acted as a heterogeneous nucleation for the crystallization of polyethylene but also hindered the transport of the polyethylene molecule chains at the same time, resulting in a decrease of the crystallization growth rate of polyethylene with clay loading. In addition, the nucleation activity and the activation energy for the crystallization of polyethylene/clay nanocomposites were also estimated.