Fabrication and characterization of surface modified nanofibrillated cellulose incorporated polypropylene composites

Abstract

Increasing demand for materials with improved properties leads to acquiring advancement of nanomaterial. Therefore, Interest in nanocellulose has been increasing exponentially in recent years. Nanocellulose extracted from plant materials are divided into two main two categories as nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) and nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC). Compared to NCC, NFC has gained more attention due to attractive properties such as high mechanical properties, reinforcing ability and aspect ratio. Reinforcement of NFC with synthetic polymer materials is an interesting area in the polymer-based researches over the past decades to enhance mechanical and thermal properties as well as to deplete the environmental pollution. Polypropylene is one of the widely used thermoplastic materials as matrix material in engineering composite applications. In nature, NFC is hydrophilic and polypropylene is hydrophobic. Therefore, surface modification of NFC reinforcement is necessary to prepare a nanocomposite with good performance. The prepared nanocomposite material can be used for many engineering applications. In the present research discuss mechanical, thermal and water absorption properties of polypropylene with up to 5 wt. % loading of unmodified and silane surface modified NFC reinforced composites. Scanning electron microscopic images, Fourier-transform infrared spectra, X-ray diffractograms and thermal gravimetric analysis were used to characterize the raw materials and surface modified NFC samples. The best thermal resistance and mechanical properties were given by the 3.5% silane surface modified NFC loaded polypropylene composite such as the hardness, tensile strength, and impact strength values are respectively 7.4%, 12.6%, and 86.1% higher than that of untreated NFC reinforced composite materials and neat polypropylene. In addition, the composite sample has the intermediate level of water absorption (0.1 wt. %) and processability (21.1 g/10 min) with respect to all the other samples including pure polypropylene.