Effects of POSS nanoparticles on ABS-g-Ma thermo oxidation resistance

Abstract

Thermo oxidative degradation at and beyond process- ing temperatures has been carried out on ABS copoly- mer grafted with Maleic Anhydride (ABS- g -Ma) and three nanocomposites with the above material melt-blended with different types of POSS, being amino-propyl isobutyl (APOSS), glycidyl (GPOSS), and trisilanol (TPOSS). The incorporation adequacy of the nanofillers into the matrix has been assessed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), whereas the quantification of the thermal degradation behavior of each sample was carried out through infrared spectrography (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) including the degra- dation kinetics and color spectrophotometry (Cielab). Although the results show adequate incorporation and miscibility of the nanofillers into the matrix, the GPOSS and the TPOSS nanocomposites provided no relevant improvements in thermal stability when compared with the base ABS- g -Ma, and the APOSS blend exhibits a very slight decay in almost all the quantitative analysis carried out in this work.