Layered-silicate based polystyrene nanocomposite microcellular foam using supercritical carbon dioxide as blowing agent

作者：Zhu Bin; Zha Weibin; Yang Jintao; Zhang Cailiang; Lee L James^*

来源：Polymer, 2010, 51(10): 2177-2184.

DOI：10.1016/j.polymer.2010.03.026

• Expandable polystyrene
• Layered-silicate
• Microcellular

Exfoliated layered-silicate in the polystyrene (PS) block copolymer with different molecular weights was employed as a model material to investigate the PS nanocomposite microcellular foams expanded by supercritical carbon dioxide. Using a well-controlled foaming procedure, we investigated the influence of molecular weight of PS, dispersion and loading of layered-silicate and pressure drop rate of a blowing agent on the cell size and cell density. Our experimental results indicate that only exfoliated layered-silicate can inhibit the cell expansion and has high nucleation efficiency during foaming. The average cell diameter can be reduced from 6 mu m to 1.4 mu m and the cell density can be increased from 7.6 x 10(9) cells/cm(3) to 5.0 x 10(11) cells/cm(3). On the contrary, aggregated layered-silicate in PS did not show any effect on the cell morphology of PS foam.

• 出版日期2010-5-4