Improved Strength and Heat Distortion Temperature of Emi-Aromatic Polyamide 10T-co-1012 (PA10T/1012)/GO Composites via In Situ Polymerization.

In this paper, an effective method for preparing poly (p-phenylene terephthalamide) -co- poly (dodecanedioyl) decylamine (PA10T/1012)/graphene oxide (GO) composites by pre-dispersion and one-step in situ polymerization was proposed for the first time. During the process of polycondensation, the condensation between the terminal amino groups of PA10T/1012 chains and the oxygen-containing functional groups of GO allowed nylon to be grafted onto graphene sheets. The effects of polymer grafting on the thermal and mechanical properties of (PA10T/1012)/GO composites were studied in detail. Due to the interaction between PA10T/1012 grafted graphene sheets and its matrix, GO is well dispersed in the PA10T/1012 matrix and physically entangled with it, forming a cross-linked network structure of polymer bridged graphene, thus obtaining enhanced tensile strength, tensile modulus and impact strength. More importantly, benefiting from the cross-linked network structure, the heat distortion temperature (HDT) of the composite is greatly increased from 77.3 °C to 144.2 °C. This in situ polycondensation method opens a new avenue to prepare polycondensate graphene-based composites with high strength and high heat distortion temperatures.

Synthesis and characterization of semiaromatic copolyamide 10T/1014 with high performance and flexibility.

Poly (decamethylene terephthalamide) (PA10T) is a kind of engineering plastics with high strength and high modulus, but one of its disadvantages is its low elongation at break. In order to improve the flexibility of PA10T, one aliphatic comonomer with a long alkyl chain is introduced to the molecular chain of PA10T. Then long chain semiaromatic copolyamides 10T/1014 were synthesized with different contents of 1014 units by polycondensation reaction of 1,10-diaminodecane, terephthalic acid and 1,12-dodecanedicarboxylic acid in deionized water. The intrinsic viscosities of the resultant polyamides ranged from 0.90 to 1.03 dL/g were obtained. The chemical and crystal structures of the copolymers were characterized by FTIR, 1H-NMR and WAXD. These copolyamides exhibited outstanding thermal properties with melting points range of 306-295 °C and degradation temperatures range of 479-472 °C at maximum degradation rate, and also have a wider processing window than PA10T. The tensile strength of PA10T/1014 copolymers decreased gradually from 80.02 to 72.95 MPa as the content of 1014 units increasing from 5 to 20 mol %, while the elongation at break increased significantly from 57 to 150%. The moisture content of 10T/1014 copolyamides decreased with increasing the 1014 unit contents. It suggests that 10T/1014 copolyamides could be a kind of promising heat-resistant engineering thermoplastic in the future applications.