Article: Plastification or melting: a critical process for free radical grafting in screw extruders.

INTRODUCTION

During the past years, our laboratory has been very much involved in the free radical grafting of monomers onto existing polymer backbones by reactive extrusion (1) with emphasis on the chemical aspects of the problem. This is because although free radical grafting is probably the oldest, yet widely practiced and most inexpensive method to chemically modify existing polymers, it is always accompanied by side reactions. Unless these side reactions are minimized, they may lead to significant loss of physical and mechanical properties of the original polymers. For example, polypropylene (PP) suffers from chain degradation by [Beta]-scission, while ...

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