Has the reaction kinetics an effect on the phase morphology and mechanical properties of blends prepared by reactive processing?

The reactive blending of SAN with EPR has been studied as a straightforward way of toughening the otherwise fragile thermoplastic. For this purpose, SAN (or part of SAN) has been modified by various amounts of primary amines or carbamate groups (which are nothing but primary amine precursors) and used in conjunction with commercially available EPR-g-maleic anhydride (EPR-g-MA) preblended with EPDM. A SAN-g-EPR is expected to be formed at the interface through an imide bonding. It is clear that the molecular architecture and the residence of this copolymer at the interface depends on the reaction kinetics in a close dependency on the type and concentration of the reactive groups attached to SAN, the content of reactive SAN in the SAN phase, the addition order of the constitutive components of quaternary blends (reactive SAN+SAN+EPR-g-MA-EPDM) of a constant composition. Dependence of the impact properties, the phase structures and the interfacial adhesion on these experimental parameters will be discussed, and conditions for a 10 fold increase in the impact energy as well.