Well-Defined Polypropylene/Polypropylene-Grafted Silica Nanocomposites: Roles of Number and Molecular Weight of Grafted Chains on Mechanistic Reinforcement

Grafting terminally functionalized polypropylene (PP) to nanofillers provides well-defined PP-based nanocomposites plausibly featured with a physical cross-linkage structure. In this paper, a series of PP-grafted silica nanoparticles (PP-g-SiO2) were synthesized by varying the number of grafted chains per silica particle, and influences of the number and the molecular weight of grafted chains were studied on physical properties of PP/PP-g-SiO2 nanocomposites. We found that only 20–30 chain/particle was sufficient to exploit benefits of the PP grafting for the nanoparticle dispersion, the nucleation, and the Young’s modulus. Meanwhile, the yield strength was sensitive to both of the number and the molecular weight of grafted PP: Grafting longer chains at a higher density led to greater reinforcement.