Abstract
In this work, we studied the melt rheology of multigraft copolymers with a styrene–acrylonitrile maleic anhydride (SANMA) terpolymer backbone and randomly grafted polyamide 6 (PA 6) chains. The multi-grafted chains were formed by interfacial reactions between the maleic anhydride groups of SANMA and the amino end groups of PA 6 during melt blending. Because of the phase separation of SANMA and PA 6, the grafted SANMA backbones formed nearly circular domains which were embedded in the PA 6 melt with a diameter in the order of 20 to 40 nm. The linear viscoelastic behaviour of PA 6/SANMA blends at a sufficiently large SANMA concentration displayed the characteristics of the critical gel state, i.e. the power relations G′ ∝ G′′ ∝ ω 0.5. In elongation, the PA 6/SANMA blend at the critical gel state showed a non-linear strain hardening behaviour already at a very small Hencky strain. In contrast to neat PA 6, the elasticity of the PA 6/SANMA blends was strongly pronounced, which was demonstrated by recovery experiments. Rheotens tests agreed with the linear viscoelastic shear oscillations and the measurements using the elongational rheometer RME. Increasing the SANMA concentration led to a larger melt strength and a reduced drawability. The occurrence of the critical gel state can be interpreted by the cooperative motion of molecules which develops between the grafted PA 6 chains of neighbouring micelle-like SANMA domains.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are very thankful to W. Schmidheiny and J. Hostettler for their continuous support of the experimental work and to the Swiss National Science Foundation for the financial grant of this project (No. 200021-103287). They are also indebted to Dr. W. Heckmann for providing the transmission electron micrographs and to Mrs. M.Sc. J. Uhm for the Rheotens experiments. Very valuable discussions with Prof. J. Meissner, Prof. H.C. Öttinger and Mr. M.Sc. Bangarusampath are gratefully acknowledged.
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Sailer, C., Weber, M., Steininger, H. et al. Grafting of polyamide 6 on a styrene–acrylonitrile maleic anhydride terpolymer: melt rheology at the critical gel state. Rheol Acta 48, 579–588 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00397-009-0359-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00397-009-0359-7