Investigation on the Effects of MXene and β-Nucleating Agent on the Crystallization Behavior of Isotactic Polypropylene

Wanxin Peng; Jian Kang; Xiuduo Song; Yue Zhang; Bo Hu; Ya Cao; Ming Xiang

doi:10.3390/polym13172931

Investigation on the Effects of MXene and β-Nucleating Agent on the Crystallization Behavior of Isotactic Polypropylene

Polymers (Basel). 2021 Aug 31;13(17):2931. doi: 10.3390/polym13172931.

Authors

Wanxin Peng¹, Jian Kang¹, Xiuduo Song², Yue Zhang³, Bo Hu³, Ya Cao¹, Ming Xiang¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
² Key Laboratory of Combustion and Explosion Technology, Xi'an Modern Chemistry Research Institute, Xi'an 710065, China.
³ Dongfang Electric Machinery Co., Ltd., Deyang 618000, China.

Abstract

The effects of MXene on the crystallization behavior of β-nucleated isotactic polypropylene (iPP) were comparatively studied. The commonly used MXene Ti₃C₂T_x was prepared by selective etching and its structure and morphology were studied in detail. Then MXene and a rare earth β-nucleating agent (NA) WBG-II were nucleated with iPP to prepare samples with different polymorphic compositions. The crystallization, melting behavior, and morphologies of neat iPP, iPP/MXene, iPP/WBG-II, and iPP/MXene/WBG-II were comparatively studied. The crystallization behavior analysis reveals that a competitive relationship exists between MXene and WBG-II when they were compounded as α and β nucleating agents. In the system, the β-nucleation efficiency (NE) of WBG-II is higher than α-NE of MXene. The β-phase has relatively low thermal stability and would transform to α-phase when cooled below a critical temperature.

Keywords: MXene; isotactic polypropylene; polymorphic crystallization behavior; β-nucleating agent.