Fabrication of polypropylene blends with excellent low‐temperature toughness and balanced toughness‐rigidity by a combination of EPR and SEEPS

To overcome serious rigidity depression of rubber-toughened plastics and fabricate a rigidity-toughness balanced thermoplastic, a combination of styrene-[ethylene-(ethylene-propylene)]-styrene block copolymer (SEEPS) and ethylene-propylene rubber (EPR) was used to toughen polypropylene. The dynamic mechanical properties, crystallization and melting behavior, and mechanical properties of polypropylene (PP)/EPR/SEEPS blends were studied in detail. The results show that the combination of SEEPS and EPR can achieve the tremendous improvement of low-temperature toughness without significant strength and rigidity loss. Dynamic mechanical properties and phase morphology results demonstrate that there is a good interfacial strength and increased loss of compound rubber phase comprised of EPR component and EP domain of SEEPS. Compared with PP/EPR binary blends, although neither glass transition temperature (Tg) of the rubber phase nor Tg of PP matrix in PP/EPR/SEEPS blends decreases, the brittle-tough transition temperature (Tbd) of PP/EPR/SEEPS blends decreases, indicating that the increased interfacial interaction between PP matrix and compound rubber phase is also an effective approach to decrease Tbd of the blends so as to improve low-temperature toughness. The balance between rigidity and toughness of PP/EPR/SEEPS blends is ascribed to the synergistic effect of EPR and SEEPS on toughening PP. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018, 135, 45714.