Two biobased polymers, poly(trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT) and high density polyethylene with varying
concentrations were injectionmolded for their performance evaluation. Differential scanning calorimetry determined
that the majority of the blends exhibited a cold crystallization peak in the first heating cycle. Dynamicmechanical
analysis revealed an increase in the storage modulus after the material has passed its Tg which can be
related to the material's ability to cold crystallization. Blending demonstrated intermediate values for the tensile
and flexural properties in comparison to each neat polymer. However, the notched Izod impact strength was
higher for blends containing less than 50 wt.% biobased polyethylene (BioPE) compared to the virgin materials.
The best performance in comparison to the other blends was observed for the PTT/BioPE (80/20) wt.% formulation,
which had balanced tensile and flexural properties and an increase of 64% in the impact strength. This was
explained through the impact fracturemorphology via scanning electron microscopy.Variations in PTT and BioPE
loading resulted in different surface structures, phase distributions and particle sizes. PTT as theminor phase resulted
in randomly distributed large spheres.Whereas,when BioPEwas theminor phase, it formed small uniform
spherical/rod-like structures. Smaller particle size provided a toughening effect on the impact strength.