Jittrawadee Phunkum. A study to improve adhesion between surface grafted polyethylene and epoxy resin. Master's Degree(Polymer Science and Technology). Mahidol University. : Mahidol University, 2005.
A study to improve adhesion between surface grafted polyethylene and epoxy resin
Abstract:
This study was aimed to find methods to improve adhesion between surface grafted
polyethylene and epoxy resin. PE film and fiber were grafted with two types of water soluble
vinyl monomer. These were acrylamide (AAm) and acrylic acid (AA). Grafting was carried
out using the 2-stage method. Hydroxylation by thermal decomposition of potassium
persulfate (K2S2O8) was first carried out to create hydroxyl groups on PE surface. The second
stage was grafting of the monomers onto functionalised surface. The grafting reaction was
carried out in aqueous solution by ceric ion technique. Thermogravimetric (TG) analysis,
ATR-FTIR spectroscopy were used to investigate changes in surface properties. Surface
structure of interface and surface rigidity were observed by atomic force microscopy (AFM).
Interfacial adhesion of PE film and fiber with epoxy resin were measured by peel test and pull
out test, respectively. The peel strength of PE film grafted with AA (AA-g-PE) was found to
be over 2 times greater than that of PE film grafted with AAm (AAm-g-PE). This could be due
to different extent of grafting and the nature of grafted chains. Reducing moisture content in
both the AA and AAm grafted layers by drying in vacuum oven lowers interfacial adhesion
with epoxy resin, attributable to reducing grafted chain mobility and increasing surface
rigidity. However, when PE-g-AAm film was immersed in water at room temperature before
assembling with epoxy resin, the peel strength was found to increase by 8 times. An
improvement of about 40 times in peel strength was observed when using 80°C water. This
significant improvement is likely to be due to an increase in chain mobility in swelled
polyacrylamide. By contrast, swollen PE-g-AA film exhibited lower peel strength with epoxy
resin. Since AA grafted chain had already high flexibility, adhesion of AA could not be
improved by increasing grafted chain mobility through swelling. The extent of reaction,
investigated with ATR-FTIR, in swollen grafted chains was not clearly observed. This result
suggested that swelling increases interfacial adhesion through increasing physical interaction
of grafted chains and epoxy resin.