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Clustering of Coated Droplets in Clay‐Filled Polymer Blends
Author(s) -
Filippone Giovanni,
Acierno Domenico
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
macromolecular materials and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.913
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1439-2054
pISSN - 1438-7492
DOI - 10.1002/mame.201100398
Subject(s) - materials science , coalescence (physics) , polymer , rheology , composite material , compounding , cluster analysis , drop (telecommunication) , polymer blend , phase (matter) , chemical engineering , copolymer , mechanical engineering , computer science , physics , machine learning , astrobiology , engineering , chemistry , organic chemistry
The selective positioning of clay platelets at the polymer/polymer interface in a blend with drop/matrix morphology has a contrasting effect: on the one hand, it promotes a refinement of the morphology during the intense flows which occur during melt compounding; on the other hand, it induces coarsening in the course of prolonged slow flows experienced during rheological analysis. Rather than to a usual coalescence process, the increase of the average sizes of the dispersed phase is primarily due to a clustering mechanism of clay‐coated droplets, which keep their individuality inside the clusters because of the elastic connotation of the layered interface.