Exfoliated PP/Clay Nanocomposites Using Ammonium-Terminated PP as the Organic Modification for Montmorillonite

Although the miscibility of silicates, including clay minerals, with organics and polymers has been known since the early 1950s, an industrial report of a nylon-6/montmorillonite (mmt) material from Toyota1 has recently revitalized the field. Those materials were synthesized by polymerization of the monomer in the presence of the inorganic filler and showed remarkable enhancements of several thermal and mechanical prop-erties with a moderate inorganic loading (2-5 wt %). Later, Giannelis et al.2 discovered that it is possible to melt-mix polymers with clays bearing cationic organic surfactants, eliminating the need for organic solvents or in situ polymerization schemes. Such melt-blending approaches generally yield similar concurrent enhance-ments of many materials properties by the nanodisper-