Materials, Interfaces, and Electrochemical Phenomena

Flow accelerates adhesion between functional polyethylene and polyurethane

  1. Jie Song1,
  2. Randy H. Ewoldt2,
  3. Wanli Hu1,
  4. H. Craig Silvis3,
  5. Christopher W. Macosko1,*

Article first published online: 2 MAR 2011

DOI: 10.1002/aic.12551

Issue

AIChE Journal

AIChE Journal

Volume 57, Issue 12, pages 3496–3506, December 2011

Additional Information

How to Cite

Song, J., Ewoldt, R. H., Hu, W., Craig Silvis, H. and Macosko, C. W. (2011), Flow accelerates adhesion between functional polyethylene and polyurethane. AIChE J., 57: 3496–3506. doi: 10.1002/aic.12551

Author Information

  1. 1

    Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455

  2. 2

    Institute for Mathematics and its Applications & Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455

  3. 3

    Corporate Research & Development, The Dow Chemical Company, Midland, MI 48674

*Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 4 NOV 2011
  2. Article first published online: 2 MAR 2011
  3. Accepted manuscript online: 18 JAN 2011 10:33AM EST
  4. Manuscript Revised: 3 JAN 2011
  5. Manuscript Received: 2 SEP 2010

Funded by

  • The Dow Chemical Company and IPRIME (the Industrial Partnership for Research in Interfacial and Materials Engineering) at the University of Minnesota
  • NSF through the NNIN program

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Keywords:

  • polymer adhesion;
  • interface;
  • coupling reaction;
  • flow;
  • kinetics

Abstract

Polyethylene (PE) has relatively poor adhesion with polar polymeric materials. In an effort to improve the adhesion between PE and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), maleic anhydride (MA), hydroxyl (OH), and secondary amine (NHR) functionalized PEs were blended into nonmodified PE. These functional groups will react with urethane linkages in TPU at the temperature of melt processing. We bonded these PEs to TPU via lamination and coextrusion. To compare the two processes, we determined the interfacial copolymer density Σ considering both advection and interfacial area generation. We found that the development of adhesion in coextrusion was much faster in comparison with lamination at the same temperature. This difference was attributed to the extensional and compressive flow in coextrusion overcoming the diffusion barrier at the interface and forcing reactive species to penetrate the interface. The effects of functional group reactivity and processing variables on adhesion were correlated with interfacial copolymer coverage. Amine functionalized PE showed dramatic adhesion improvement even at 1 wt %. © 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2011

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