Nonisothermal crystallization behavior of poly(butylene adipate‐co‐terephthalate)/clay nano‐biocomposites

Abstract

The study of the nonisothermal crystallization behavior of layered silicates micro‐ and nano‐biocomposites based on poly(butylene adipate‐co‐terephthalate) (PBAT), a biodegradable copolyester, has been carried out with different theoretical models. They were applied and developed with the aim to describe and better understand the influence of the layered silicates dispersion on crystallization. The nucleation efficiency of the layered silicates has been demonstrated with the use of the “Modified Avrami model,” thanks to the higher crystallization rate parameter, Zc, and of the lower crystallization half‐time, t1/2, compared to the neat matrix. The crystallization activation energies, Ea, calculated from “Kissinger's model” have shown that layered silicates have a negative effect on the crystallite growth process. Thus, these analyses have shown that layered silicates have a double effect on the crystallization process. These two opposites' phenomena depend on the dispersion quality and are more pronounced for the intercalated nano‐biocomposites. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 45: 1503–1510, 2007

An overview on properties and applications of poly(butylene adipate‐co‐terephthalate)–PBAT based composites

“…The fillers can act as heterogeneous nucleation sites (Fig. 2), increasing the crystallinity of the PBAT [86,87]. The increase in crystallinity is usually associated with improved mechanical properties of the polymers [73,84,88,89], however, this relation is not always linear.…”

Clay Nano-Biocomposites Based on PBAT Aromatic Copolyesters

“…These early works were expanded by Chivrac et al [13,14] who tested various organoclays, such as C20A, D43B and N804 and compared the solvent and melt intercalation elaboration processes. The resulting materials structure and properties were compared to neat PBAT and to PBAT/MMT-Na, the composites with non-modified montmorillonite.…”

“…No impact of the clay dispersion has been observed on the Tg and Tm values, whereas the crystallinity showed decreasing values when increasing the clay content for both unmodified and organomodified clays. Thus, authors investigated more in details the influence of the clay dispersion on the PBAT non-isothermal crystallization [14] and it was concluded that addition of a small amount of MMT enhances the PBAT nucleation mechanism, but also that the dispersed clay platelets hinder the crystallites growth. These two antagonist phenomena may lead to different PBAT crystallization behaviour depending on the clay dispersion.…”

Structure and properties of organically modified poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) based nanocomposites

“…Someya et al, (2004Someya et al, ( ,2005 [12,13] obtained certain level of clay intercalation and exfoliation in several compositions of PBAT/clay nanocomposites prepared by melt intercalation. Chivrac et al, (2006Chivrac et al, ( , 2007 [14,15] have tested some commercial montmorillonites in PBAT compositions, revealing that higher intercalation degrees could be obtained by using particular preparation techniques and that the stiffness of PBAT matrix could increase with clay content due to the important interactions between PBAT and nanoparticles. In a recent work [16][17][18], we studied the morphology and properties of PBAT nanocomposites prepared by meltmixing and by using different amount and types of nanoparticles including montmorillonite, fluorohectorite, and sepiolite.…”