preparation and mechanical properties of polypropylene / montmorillonite nanocomposites - after grafted with hard/soft grafting agent

using a plastograph-mixer by the twin-screw mixed method to obtain the standard shaped specimens of polymer-clay nanocomposites (pcn), to prepare polypropylene (pp) / montmorillonite (mmt) nanocomposites pellets, grafting with two kinds of different surfactant − maleic anhydride (ma) or thermoplastic polyolefin elastomers (tpo). the chemical structure and polymer morphology of these as-synthesized pcn specimens were characterized by wide-angle powder x-ray diffraction (xrd) and scanning electron microscopy (sem). in addition, we prepare these experimental specimens in order to probe into its mechanical properties. these tests used are: layer distance of pcn, tensile, impact, shore-hardness, wearing tests, and so on. in addition, use xrd to make the characterization analysis, compare it to scatter and layer-distance. it is found that increasing the ma into the mmt, layer-distance at 5 wt% increase from 2.09 nm to 3.94 nm; and increase the tpo into the mmt, layer-distance at 1 wt% increase to the 3.27 nm. for the mechanical property, it is found that these specimens graft the ma have the following results: in the shore hardness test, the mmt weight percentage 5 wt% has the best result, increased by 51.2%. in the wearing test, the mmt 3 wt% strengthens by 81.48%.