Nonisothermal crystallization behavior of poly(ε-caprolactone)/attapulgite nanocomposites by DSC analysis

Nanocomposites based on biodegradable poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL) and attapulgite (AT) were prepared by solution mixing. The nonisothermal crystallization of the pure PCL and PCL/AT nanocomposites at different AT contents and different cooling rates were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). There are significant dependence of nonisothermal crystallization behavior and kinetics of PCL/AT nanocomposites on the AT content and cooling rate. The Jeziorny method has been employed to analyze the DSC data. The results show that Jeziorny method could describe this system well. It can be concluded that AT can be used as an effective nucleating agent and has effects on the growth of crystallites in the crystallization process of PCL matrix.