Enhancement on the properties of polypropylene using bamboo particles: Effect of particle sizes and loadings

Abstract.

Micro-size bamboo particles (BP) derived from abundant and renewable bamboo resources have attracted extensive attention due to its high aspect ratio and surface area. The employment of BP into polypropylene (PP) as fillers is an alternative for biomass value-added exploration. Micro-size BP was incorporated into PP matrix to obtain composites of good comprehensive performance. The composites were fabricated with different loadings of BP (BP: 10, 20, 30, 40wt%) by mixing and heat compression molding. Mechanical property, thermal property and morphological property of composites with two different sizes BP were comparatively investigated. Results showed that the tensile strength and flexural strength of composites decreased when the addition of BP exceed 20 wt%. Nevertheless, the coarser BP exhibited better reinforcing effect on PP, and the preferable mechanical property was acquired at 10 wt% BP loading, with which the tensile strength of PP improved by 99.8%. The incorporation of BP increased crystallization temperature and melting temperature of PP by about 5°C, respectively. The BP acted as nucleating agent in the PP/BP composites corroborated by the increased crystallinity, which was also well consistent with the strength enhancement. Interfacial adhesion between BP and PP was confirmed by the morphology observation by field emission scanning electron microscopy analysis.