Mechanical and thermal behavior of poly(acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene)/polycarbonate blends reinforced with potassium titanate whiskers

Poly(acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) (ABS)/polycarbonate (PC) blends reinforced with potassium titanate (K₂Ti₆O₁₃) whiskers were prepared in a twin screw extruder followed by injection molding. The whiskers were pretreated with tetrabutyl orthotitanate prior to compounding. The tensile, dynamic mechanical, impact, morphology and thermal properties of the blends were studied. Tensile tests showed that the modulus of ABS/PC/K₂Ti₆O₁₃ blend increased markedly with increasing whisker content. However, the variation of the modulus of ABS/PC/K₂Ti₆O₁₃ blend with PC content followed a sigmoidal relation. In addition, the tensile strength of the blends containing 20 wt% PC tended to increase markedly with increasing whisker content. But the impact strength of the blends containing 20 wt% PC decreased rapidly with increasing whisker content. Dynamic mechanical analyses (DMA) results indicated that the storage modulus of the blends increased markedly with increasing K₂Ti₆O₁₃ whisker content. Differential thermal analysis and thermogravimetric measurements showed that potassium titanate whiskers tend to induce chemical decomposition of PC during blending of the PC/whisker blends. However, the incorporation of ABS into PC was beneficial to reduce the PC decomposition during compounding with the whiskers.