Lead author：Defeng Wu, Chixing Zhou, Ming Zhang, Hidehiro Kumazawa
Publishing agency：Research Signpost
publication date：2009-10-26
location：Trivandrum-695 023, Kerala, India
SBN：ISBN: 81-308-0145-0年
brief introduction：

Poly(butylene terephthalate) (PBT), a typical semicrystalline polymer, was first researched and developed as a commercial product in 1970 by the Celaneseis Co., USA. In the past decades, PBT has been widely used as an engineering plastic in fibres and mouldings due to its excellent mechanical properties, self-lubrication and dimensional stability as well as convenient manufacturing. But the low glass transition temperatures restrict further applications of PBT strongly. Many conventional research works concerning the modification of PBT hence have concentrated on blending it with other polymers or glass fibres to obtain new polymeric materials with desirable properties. Compared with those traditional modification approaches, the use of layered silicate as nano-scale fillers in polymers to prepare polymer/layered silicate nanocomposite (PLSN) has received considerable attention in recent years because PLSN frequently exhibits unexpected properties. The PBT nanocomposite based on the layered silicate has already been prepared and such a preparation method has becomes one of the most important methods to obtain PBT hybrids with high performance. Also, both the morphology (in microscopic and mesoscopic scale) and macroscopic behaviors of PBT/layered silicate nanocomposites are studied extensively to explore the way of possible industrialization.

This review is hence given of the academic and industrial aspects of the preparation, morphology and properties of PBT/Clay nanocomposites. The whole range of those macroscopic behaviors is covered, i.e. mechanical properties, crystallization behaviors and melt rheology as well as intercalation kinetics. Additionally, the effects of the clay loadings, structural parameters of PBT matrix, melt blending methods, compatibilizer, thermal history, shear actions and intercalation kinetics on both the structural evolution and properties enhancements are discussed in detail, which may make further insight into quantitative and qualitative relationships between hierarchical structure and properties of PBT/Clay nanocomposites.