A liquid reactive extrusion process was developed to prepare graphene/polyamide 6 nanocomposites and its crystalline and mechanical properties.

An effective method of in‐situ anionic ring‐opening polymerization of caprolactam (CL) is adopted to prepare polyamide‐6 (PA6)/reduced graphene oxide (RGO) composite microspheres utilizing reaction‐induced phase inversion of polymer pairs PA6/polystyrene (PS) with the presence of graphene oxide (GO). The reduction of GO with CL as reducing agent in the preparation process of microspheres is studied in detail. The morphology, functional groups, crystallization properties and thermal stability of PA6‐based composite microspheres are analyzed by different techniques (i. e. SEM, TEM, FTIR, DSC and TGA). Results indicate that both crystallinity and melting temperature of PA6/RGO composite microspheres are improved by RGO inclusion, and the thermal property of PA6/RGO microspheres is obviously better than that of neat PA6 microspheres.

ABS/PA6-compatibilized blends were prepared by in situ reactive extrusion method. The main objective was to evaluate the influences of the morphology and blend composition on the rheological and nonisothermal crystallization properties. The morphology of submicron-sized ABS droplets evenly dispersed in PA6 led to dilatant fluid behavior and a transition from elastic to viscous behavior in the low-frequency region. The crystallization results indicated that reactive blends had elevated crystallization temperatures and crystallization rates, which were due to the heterogeneous nucleation of the submicron-sized ABS particles. In addition, it was observed that the theory by Mo suitably described the nonisothermal crystallization process. The activation energy slightly decreased for ABS contents of 5 and 15 wt % and then increased for a content of 25 wt %, indicating that the ABS promoted the crystallization of the blends at appropriate contents.

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