Effects of length and organic modification of attapulgite nanorods on attapulgite/polystyrene nanocomposite via in-situ radical bulk polymerization

Highlight
• Effects of length and modifying level of ATP on ATP/PS nanocomposites are studied.
• Longer ATP or with higher modifying level leads to higher Tg and poorer processability.
• OATP with lower modifying level is recommended with low feeding ratio.

The in-situ radical bulk polymerization technique has been proved to be the most efficient strategy for the inorganic/polymer nanocomposites due to its facile mass-production and excellent interfacial properties. However, the inevitable gelation in this approach might cause negative influence on the processing performance of the nanocomposites. Here, the effects of the length and organic modification of the attapulgite nanorods on the performance of the attapulgite/polystyrene (ATP/PS) nanocomposites synthesized via the in-situ radical bulk polymerization technique were studied. The relative molecular weight of polystyrene, percentage of grafting (PG%), particle size of the ATP-PS micro-gels, and glass transition temperature (Tg) of the resultant ATP/PS nanocomposites were discussed. And the processing property of the ATP/PS nanocomposites was also preliminarily investigated by comparing their melting index (MI). Such understanding would lead to a better design to high-performance inorganic/polymer nanocomposites based on high aspect-ratio nanomaterials.

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