INCREASING TENSILE STRENGTH OF THE BLEND TPU/PP BY INDUSTRIAL-SCALE GRAPHENE NANOPLATELETS

Abstract

Blending polymers into a compound is one of the fast and inexpensive methods to form a new
material. Good compatibility between original components needs to be achieved to create a blend
of mechanical and technical characteristics that are practically feasible. However, most polymers are
not compatible enough to produce practical application blends. This research applied industrial-
scale GNPs - inexpensive and commercialized graphene as a compatibilizer for the blend based on
polypropylene (PP) and thermal plastic polyurethane (TPU). The results showed that the blend with
GNPs 0.05% reached the highest point of the tensile strength of 18.01MPa, which was higher by
30% than that of the blend TPU/PP. Furthermore, GNPs were similar, or even superior in some cases
in comparison with PP-g-MAH in the role of the compatibilizer, such as improving tensile strength,
tension Young modulus, and the stiffness of the matrix TPU.