New impact polystyrene with Improved Properties

Polystyrene (PS) is transparent, all purpose and thermoplastic polymer, however, it has fragile structure which limits its application. In this study to overcome this drawback, PS is melt blended with different amounts of poly1-hexene (PH) and co-polyhexen/hexadiene (COPOLY) rubbers and compared with conventional polystyrene/polybutadiene (PS/BR) blend. Scanning electron microscopy reveal that the dispersion of PH and COPOLY rubbers in polystyrene matrix is more uniform with the appearance of small particles in PS matrix, however in the case of PS/BR blends the fracture surface shows non homogenous morphology with the appearance of bigger BR particles in polymer matrix. Impact strength of PS/PH and PS/COPOLY blends is 1-59 % and 14-132 % higher than that in PS/BR blends and 145-1058 % and 258-1228 % higher than that in neat polystyrene, respectively. Our obtained results suggest new impact modified polystyrene that in all studied aspects has better performance than the conventional PS/BR blends

Keywords:

polymer blends , poly1-hexene , copolymer , polystyrene , impact modifier