Photo-oxidative degradation of TiO2/polypropylene films

• Photo-oxidative degradation of polypropylene is accelerated by TiO2 incorporation.
• Weight loss, FTIR, SEM and GPC shown high degree of degradation of polypropylene.
• A mechanism of the photo-degradation of polypropylene by TiO2 is proposed.

Photo-oxidative degradation of polypropylene films with TiO2 nanoparticles incorporated was studied in a chamber of weathering with Xenon lamps as irradiation source. TiO2 powder with crystalline structure of anatase was synthesized by thermal treatments at 400 and 500 °C starting from a precursor material obtained by sol–gel method. Composites of TiO2/polypropylene were prepared with 0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 wt% of TiO2. The mixture of components was performed using a twin screw extruder, the resulting material was pelletized by mechanical fragmenting and then hot-pressed in order to form polypropylene films with TiO2 dispersed homogeneously. Photo-oxidative degradation process was followed by visual inspection, weight loss of films, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), infrared spectroscopy with Fourier transformed (FTIR), and gel permeation chromatography (GPC).

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