THERMAL AND MECHANICAL-PROPERTIES OF HDPE/IONOMER BLENDS

Abstract

The thermal behavior, tensile and tear strength of blends containing high density polyethylene (HDPE) and a sodium neutralized ethylene-methacrylic acid copolymer ionomer have been studied. It was found that each HDPE/ionomer blend had two well-separated melting peaks and two crystallization peaks, which indicates that the components of such a blend are immiscible with each other. The tensile behavior of the ionomer showed severe strain-hardening just above the yield point, which leads to a lower elongation at break and a higher tensile strength than HDPE, possibly due to a network-like structure formation of ionic aggregates. The tensile properties of HDPE/ionomer blends were generally inferior to those of the pure components. Furthermore, the tensile properties exhibited severe negative deviation from linear additivity of properties, which is characteristic of incompatible blends. The negative deviation was also observed for tear strength of HDPE/ionomer blends. Observation of tear fracture surfaces of the blends showed fibrillar structure when ionomer content was relatively low. However, for the blends of higher ionomer composition much less fibrillation on the fracture surface was observed, which yields a higher value of tear energy. This is attributed to a network-like structure of the ionomer continuous phase of the blends.