Effects of crystal planes of ZnO nanocrystal on crystalline, thermal and thermal-oxidation stability of iPP

The nanocrystalline with different crystal planes often displayed diverse physical and chemical properties. However, the effects of crystal planes of inorganic nano-particle have been few focused on. Here, two kinds of nano-crystal ZnO with different crystal planes were used to explore their effect on the crystallization nucleation, crystal morphologies, thermal and thermal-oxidation stability of iPP. The results shown that the (1010) and (0002) planes possessed different effects for iPP. The (1010) planes with non-polar and low surface energy has highly nucleating effective for iPP, the crystallization temperature increased by 11 °C, the size of spherulites decreased, the number of spherulites increased, the nucleation efficiency and crystallization rate up to 57.81% and 1.27 min⁻¹, the thermal and thermal oxidation stability (TG, OIT, OOT) of iPP improved by 6 °C, 6 min and 12 °C. In contrast, the (0002) planes with polar and high surface energy have no effect for iPP. Our research results indicate that the wettability and interface compatibility between crystal planes and iPP matrix, which was caused by the polarity and surface energy of (1010) or (0002) planes played key role in improving the performance of polymers.