KEY WORDSAcrylate Rubber / Chlorinated Polypropylene / Hindered Phenol / Dynamic Mechanical Property / Interphase Migration / Damping / In recent studies, 1, 2 our attention has been focused on the discovery of unknown functions of a polymer elicited by the addition of small molecular substances. It was found that the addition of 3,9-bis{1,1-dimethyl-2[β-(3-tert-butyl-4-hydroxy-5-methylphenyl) propionyloxy]ethyl}-2,4,8,10-tetraoxaspiro[5,5]-undecane (AO-80) into an immiscible acrylate rubber (ACM) and chlorinated polypropylene (CPP) blend not only resulted in a remarkable enhancement of the damping properties but also gave the ACM/CPP blend significant peel strength. As a result, a ternary blend of ACM/CPP with more AO-80 was found to be a very good self-adhesive damping material. It has also been revealed that the AO-80 molecules are preferentially distributed to a continuous ACM phase when the AO-80 content is lower than 30%. In order to obtain a very broad, almost rectangular transition range with values for the area under the linear loss factor (tan δ) curve, it is important to control AO-80 distribution in each phase of an immiscible ACM/CPP blend because polymer blends with organic small molecule substance prepared by different methods could show differences in damping properties. 3 On the other hand, much interest has been shown in diffusion and transport of organic small molecules within polymer blends. 4,5 In addition the technological importance of the molecular transport of organic small molecules within polymer blends plays a vital role in a variety of applications such as separation processes, 6 controlled drug release, 7 reverse osmosis, 8 and microelectronics. 9 It has been pointed out that the primary goal of these studies was to estimate the sorption, diffusion, and permeation coefficients and to study their temperature dependence. However, a survey of the literature revealed that the mechanism by which the transport of organic small molecule influences the dynamic mechanical properties of a polymer blend has not been studied thoroughly.The aim of the present study is to establish a method for controlling the dynamic mechanical properties of an immiscible ACM/CPP blend with AO-80 by the transport of AO-80 molecules from CPP domains to the ACM matrix during heat treatment at a temperature above the melting point of AO-80. For this purpose, unpressed samples of ACM/CPP with AO-80 sample in which AO-80 as crystalline particles are preferentially distributed in the CPP phase were prepared. Another aim of this study was to try establishing a new concept for designing a damping material with a broad, almost rectangular loss tangent tan δ peak.
EXPERIMENTALThe ACM used in this study was commercial grade (Nippon zeon Co., Nipol AR42 W); CPP with 29.5% of the weight content of chloride was a thermoplastic resin (Nippon paper industries Co., Superchlon 803MWS). The AO-80 (as shown in Figure 1 of ref 1) used as a functional additive, was a commercial antioxidant (ADK STAB AO-80; Asahi Denka Industries Co.)...