Adhesion properties of atactic polypropylene/acrylate blend copolymer and its adhesion mechanism for untreated polypropylene materials

The adhesion and coating of polypropylene (PP) materials usually requires pre-processing, or the use of modified chlorinated polypropylene (CPP) as an adhesive, which is often synthesized in a benzene solution. Here a feasible method was achieved to modify atactic polypropylene (APP) to obtain an adhesive for polypropylene. Through “grafting from”, acrylate monomers were successfully grafted onto atactic polypropylene to obtain a blend copolymer in a butyl acetate solution. The adhesive presented excellent adhesion to polypropylene. A maximum peel strength of 12.9 N/m was achieved. A mechanism to account for this enhanced adhesion between the blend copolymer and PP was proposed. In addition to a van der Waals force contribution, it was concluded that the promotion of adhesion included the contributions from diffusion and entanglement together with crystallization.