Enhancing the Thermal Stability of Polypropylene by Blending with Low Amounts of Natural Antioxidants

"This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Hernández-Fernández, Joaquín, Emilio Rayón, Juan López, and Marina P. Arrieta. 2019. Enhancing the Thermal Stability of Polypropylene by Blending with Low Amounts of Natural Antioxidants. Macromolecular Materials and Engineering 304 (11). Wiley: 1900379. doi:10.1002/mame.201900379, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/mame.201900379. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving."[EN] Natural antioxidants are added in very low amounts to protect a polypropylene (PP) matrix against thermo-oxidative degradation during processing. Thus, PP is melt-blended with caffeic, chlorogenic, trans-ferrulic, and p-coumaric acids, and also with flavone and 3-hydroxyflavone at 0.1 wt% with respect to the PP matrix. Neat PP and PP blended with three traditional antioxidants are prepared for comparison. A complete structural, thermal, and mechanical characterization is conducted. Ferrulic acid and particularly caffeic acid increases the thermal stability, showing also the highest activation energy. The structural changes of PP-based films due to the polymer thermal degradation at high temperature (i.e., 400 degrees C) followed by FTIR reveal that antioxidants effectively delay the thermal degradation process. The wettability and the mechanical performance are also studied to get information regarding the industrial application of such films. While caffeic acid provides a more flexible material, ferrulic acid provides higher water resistance. Finally, AFM-QNM shows that PP with caffeic acid has the highest miscibility.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), PROMADEPCOL (MAT2017-84909-C2-2-R). M.P.A. thanks MINECO for Juan de la Cierva-incorporación postdoctoral contract (FJCI-2017-33536).Hernández-Fernández, J.; Rayón, E.; López-Martínez, J.; Arrieta, MP. (2019). Enhancing the Thermal Stability of Polypropylene by Blending with Low Amounts of Natural Antioxidants. Macromolecular Materials and Engineering. 304(11):1-13. https://doi.org/10.1002/mame.2019003791133041