Nanodiamond as an efficient nucleating agent for polyphenylene sulfide

• Nanodiamond acts as an efficient nucleating agent for PPS and promotes its crystallization via heterogenous nucleation.
• When the nanoparticle content in the composite was less than 1 wt%, the crystallization temperature increased with increasing ND content.
• The value of ΔE was maximum for the composite containing 1 wt% ND.

Nanodiamond (ND), a novel nucleating agent, was successfully compounded with polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) using twin-screw extruder. The nonisothermal crystallization of PPS and PPS/ND composite was characterized with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) technique. To determine the nonisothermal crystallization kinetics parameters and non-isothermal crystallization activation energy, the Avrami model, a new equation proposed by Mo and Kissinger formula were respectively used to comparatively analyze the relevant DSC experimental data. The results show that ND acts as an efficient nucleating agent for PPS and promotes its crystallization via heterogenous nucleation. The addition of ND also influenced the crystallization behavior of PPS, and increased the nonisothermal crystallization activation energy and tensile strength of PPS/ND composite.