Polyester materials such as polycarbonate (PC) [1–3], poly(butylene terephthalate) (PBT) [4, 5] and polyamide 6 (PA6) [6], as high-performance engineering plastics, play an important role in agriculture, industry and food packaging because of their good processability and mechanical properties. However, the inherent high notch sensitivity of polyester materials impose limitations on their suitability for certain applications in some fields [7]. Therefore, it is imperative to enhance the toughness of polyester materials. Currently, the most cost-effective and efficient approach involves physical blending with toughening agents to fabricate polymer composites. The following four kinds of toughening agents are usually applied in physical blending: rubbers, thermoplastic elastomers, traditional petroleum-based plastics, and inorganic nanoparticles [8–10]. Inorganic nanoparticles are frequently compounded with rubbers or thermoplastic elastomers to achieve the effect of synergistic toughening. Thermoplastic elastomers exhibit superior toughening performance compared to other types of toughening agents due to the unique structure containing both plastic (hard) and rubber (soft) segments [11]. Among them, ABS resins with core-shell structure have been extensively investigated for their potential in enhancing the toughness of polyester [5, 12].
Theoretically, the use of physical blending method can effectively enhance the polymer’s toughness. However, the toughening effect is usually unsatisfactory because of the poor compatibility between polymers and toughening agent [13, 14]. Therefore, the compatibilizers are necessary and often added to enhance the compatibility of two phases during the process of physical blending, thus improving the overall performance of composites [15, 16]. Alternatively, the toughening agents can be modified by incorporating some monomers with high reactivity [17]. Then the modified toughening agents reacted with toughened polymers, and promoted the formation of block or graft copolymers, thereby enhancing the compatibility of two phases [5]. Functionalization of toughening agent improve the toughening effect compared to the previous method [18, 19].
At present, the functional monomers, such as acrylic acid (AA), maleic anhydride (MAH) [20], glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) [21, 22], were often used most in the studies of functionalization of ABS resins [23]. During the process of melt blending, the reactive groups can react with the inherent groups of polyesters to form block or graft copolymers in situ at interface of two phases, which improve the compatibility of two phases [24]. The current research primarily employ the melt extrusion or emulsion polymerization methods. Nevertheless, the grafting rate achieved through melt extrusion is relatively lower and fails to obtain significant enhancement effects. The emulsion polymerization can obtain a higher grafting rate, but its implementation on a large scale is hindered by the complexity of the subsequent processing steps.
In addition, due to the high processing temperature of PC, PBT, PA6 and other polymers, the long-term high temperature will lead to oxidative degradation of the unsaturated double bond in ABS resins and reduce the toughening effect, which will result in decline of overall performance of composites [25]. The researches show that the use of saturated rubbers instead of polybutadiene rubbers in ABS resins is a good solution to this problem [26]. Among them, the use of EPDM rubbers in AES resins which not only prevent polymers from oxidative degradation at high processing temperatures, but also endow polymers with better weather resistance.
Therefore, the aim of our paper is to synthesize epoxy-functionalized AES resins (GAES resins) by high-temperature bulk polymerization, and functional monomers (GMA) were introduced in the synthesis of GAES resins. The method is characterized and proved by the fact that when the products are used as toughening agent, there is no need to add compatibilizer, and the products can form block or graft copolymers with polyesters in situ to improve the compatibility of two phases. The products synthesized by high-temperature bulk polymerization usually have special morphologies, such as internal inclusion structure, salami structure, and the existence of these structures can effectively improve the toughening effect. In addition, the products obtained by high-temperature bulk polymerization usually possess the following advantage when compared with emulsion polymerization and solution polymerization: purity of products, continuous production, short experimental period, and less pollution to environment [27].
When AXS resins are used as toughening agents to toughen polyesters, the grafting rate of resins [28, 29], molecular weights and distributions of free copolymers, and phase morphologies are important factors to determine toughening effect [30, 31]. Therefore, this paper focuses on the effects of polymerization conditions, i.e. content of initiator and chain transfer agent, content of EPDM and TDM, on graft copolymerization reaction of GAES resins and compositions, molecular weights and distributions of free copolymers. Meanwhile, the effect of GMA content on thermal stability of GAES resins were also discussed.