LLDPE is a less crystalline polymer with vast domestic and industrial applications. The synthesis of nanocomposites constituting the polymer and nanomaterials has received great interest in recent years. The in-situ synthesis of the polymer nanocomposite is an effective route to obtain a uniform dispersion and exfoliation of the nanosheet within the polymer matrices, to obtain a composite material with amazing properties. Herein, we are presenting the synthesis and thermal degradation studies of the co-, ter-polymerized ethylene-propylene (EP), EP-1-hexene(EPH)-ZnAl-LDH nanocomposites. The ZnAl LDH was synthesized by the coprecipitation method to form nano-sheets and the characteristic peaks obtained by XRD spectra (fig-1b) and the SEM images (fig-1a)confirmed the formation of the layered material. Heat-treated 15 mg (about 0.3% of the polymer product) ZnAl LDH was added along with 6 mg Cp2ZrCl2 catalyst, 5 ml methyl aluminoxane, and 80 ml toluene solvent in a schlenk flask. EP gas mixture in 95:5 molar ratio was supplied to the at 5psi to form EP/LDH while for EPH/LDH 1 ml 1-hexene was also injected to the flask. The thermal characterizations of the polymer and its nanocomposites were performed using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The DSC plot(fig-1c) reveals that the introduction of 1 ml of 1-hexene to the reaction system influenced the melting temperature (Tm) of the resultant polymer significantly. The Tm difference between EP and EPH was about 9 degrees C, while the introduction of LDH slightly alter the Tm from their corresponding analog. The TGA data obtained at multiple heating rates were utilized to estimate the degradation mechanism by deploying the master plot technique and combined kinetics analysis.

Degradation kinetic studies of in-situ polymerized EP and EP-1-hexene/LDH nanocomposites

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