Toughening of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) with poly(cis-1,4-isoprene)

Jin San Yoon, Won Sun Lee, Hyoung Joon Jin, In Joo Chin, Mal Nam Kim, Jin Hwan Go

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

40 Scopus citations

Abstract

Poly(cis-1,4-isoprene) (PIP) was blended with poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) to improve the mechanical properties of PHB. With the change in the blend composition there was virtually no shift in the Tg of either PIP or PHB, indicating that PHB and PIP were incompatible. Therefore, poly(vinyl acetate), which is compatible with PHB, was grafted onto PIP, and properties of the PHB/PIP-g-PVAc blend were characterized. As the concentration of the PIP-g-PVAc copolymer was increased in the PHB/PIP-g-PVAc blend, the Tg of the PHB rich domain was increased, while the Tg of the PIP rich domain remained nearly constant. It could be interpreted that the PVAc moiety of the graft copolymer was diffused into the PHB domain. The size of the dispersed phase of the PHB/PIP-g-PVAc blend was smaller than that of the PHB/PIP blend. The tensile properties and impact strength of the PHB/ PIP-g-PVAc blends were superior to the PHB/PIP blends.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)781-788
Number of pages8
JournalEuropean Polymer Journal
Volume35
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 1999

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (94-0900-07-01-3) and Inha University (1996).

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