Syntheses and characterizations of in situ blended metallocence polyethylene/clay nanocomposites

In this paper, we report the preparation of in situ blends of metallocence polyethylene (mPE) with montmorillonite (clay). The polymerization activity of polyethylene decreases upon increasing the amount of the clay feed. The mPE nanocomposites still possess their original melting and crystallization temperatures, but the melting and crystallization enthalpies decrease upon increasing the clay content. In addition, the polymer interaction parameter between mPE and exfoliated clay sheets was calculated to be −0.204 based on a modified Kim–Bae equilibrium melting depression equation. All of the isothermal crystallization kinetics data fit well to the Avrami crystallization equation. We found that increasing the clay content results in a faster rate of crystallization, but pure mPE still crystallizes the fastest. Using a small amount of pretreated clay results in a more homogeneous and finer dispersion of the clay in the polymer matrix, as determined by wide-angle X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy analyses. Both the values of T1ρH in the solid-state NMR spectra of the fast and slow components show increment upon increasing the clay content, which indicates that either the mobile phase tends to increase its rigidity in the clay-containing system.