Amir Rostami

In this work we studied the parameters affecting multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCTs) localization and its impact on morphology development of PMMA/PS/PP ternary blends which originally had thermodynamically preferred core-shell type morphology. The MWCNTs localization and morphological features of nanocomposite samples were studied by means of the melt linear viscoelastic experiments together with the electron microscopy results. It was found that at 0.5 wt.% of MWCNTs, the original core-shell type morphology of the ternary blend samples almost remained intact and this observation was independent of the sequence of feeding. At 1 wt.% of MWCNTs, the core-shell morphology was retained only for those nanocomposite samples prepared using sequential feeding mode. It was demonstrated that thermodynamics predictions, could be also utilized for the nanocomposites with low MWCNTs content. However this was not true for the nanocomposites with higher MWCNTs content due to predominating role of viscoelastic properties of the PS shell.