In situ compatibilization of polypropylene and polystyrene-grafted nano-sized TiO2 in the presence of Friedel–Crafts catalyst

In situ compatibilization of polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene-grafted nano-sized TiO2 (TiO2-g-PSt) was carried out by melting compounding process in the presence of Friedel–Crafts (FC) catalyst, AlCl3/styrene(St), to give the PP/TiO2-g-PSt nanocomposite. The resulting materials were investigated by the Fourier-transform infrared spectra (FTIR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and ultraviolet (UV) artificially accelerated aging testing, respectively. The results show that the dispersibility of TiO2-g-PSt in PP could be improved obviously with the help of FC catalyst, which results in a better resistance to UV aging. The PP/TiO2-g-PSt nanocomposite containing 2.0 wt.% TiO2-g-PSt with FC catalyst (AlCl3/St: 1.0 wt.% /0.3 wt.%) shows a higher percentage of retention in tensile strength, 88.2%, after UV artificially accelerated aging for 15 days.