Temporal evolution of phase morphology of polypropylene/poly(ethylene octene) elastomer binary polymer blends by phase contrast microscope

• Published in: Journal of applied polymer science Vol. 104; no. 5; pp. 2778 - 2784
• Main Authors: Xu, Xinhua, Zhu, Tianbing, Yan, Xueliang, Zhang, Chunhuai
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company 05.06.2007; Wiley
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Exact sciences and technology; fractal dimension; microstructure; morphology; Organic polymers; Physicochemistry of polymers; polyolefins; polypropylene; Properties and characterization; Structure, morphology and analysis; Polymer blends; microstructure; Olefin copolymer; Mixing time; Propylene polymer; Elastomer; Phase contrast microscopy; polypropylene; Experimental study; Modeling; Structure processing relationship; Fractal dimension; polyolefins; Morphology; Ethylene copolymer; Olefin polymer; Growth from melt
• ISSN: 0021-8995; 1097-4628
• DOI: 10.1002/app.25648

Blend films of polypropylene/poly(ethylene‐octane) at various mixing times are prepared by freezing‐microtome. The temporal evolution of their phase morphologies is investigated by phase contrast microscope (PCM). The digital image analysis, which contains the analysis in both real and wave‐number space, is introduced to deal with the PCM graphs. The characteristic length, L in real space, the average domain spacing, and the average chord lengths in wave‐number space, are used to express the domain sizes of two phases. The temporal evolution of phase morphology reaches the dynamic equilibrium between breakup and coalescences of domains at the late stage of mixing. In addition, two different fractal dimensions are defined to discuss the symmetry of the distribution of dispersed phase domains and the distribution uniformity: Df for the symmetry and Dc for the uniformity. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2007