This study provides a novel and effective strategy for achieving compatibilization of ternary or multi-phase immiscible polymer blends, by using a multi-phase compatibilizer. The good compatibilization of the multi-phase compatibilizer for the PP/PS and PP/PA6 binary and PP/PS/PA6 ternary blends can be explained by synergetic compatibilization of two functional groups in the compatibilizer.
Phase morphology in uncompatibilized ternary 70PP/15PS/15PA6 blends exhibits an encapsulated phase morphology having PA6 cores and PS shells. The addition of the PP-g-(MAH-co-St) multi-phase compatibilizer greatly changes the situation that PS and PA6 particles gets finely dispersed in the PP matrix while three components interact with each other. Such morphology demonstrates the multi-phase compatibilizer has good compatibilization between the various immiscible pairs. In the ternary blends having almost equal amount of PP, PS and PA6 (composition of 40PP/30PS/30PA6) a three-phase co-continuous morphology is developed. This morphology has been significantly changed by the compatibilization. The phase morphology is constituted from PP matrix in which are dispersed droplets of PS and PA6 phase.
In conclusion, this work is promising not only for developing ternary or multi-phase polymeric blends with unique performance, but also useful for recycling and reusing three immiscible polymers, polyolefins, styrene polymers, and engineering plastics from the waste stream.