The effect of attapulgite on crystallization behavior of Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET)/Attapulgite (AT) nano composites

Abstract Poly (ethylene terephthalate) (PET)/Attapulgite (AT) nanocomposites were prepared via in-situ polymerization. According to the observation of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), attapulgite is well dispersed in the PET matrix in a nanometer scale. The influence of attapulgite content on the nonisothermal crystallization kinetics was studied using a classical Avrami equation with Jeziorny method. The crystalline structures of the pure PET and PET/AT nanocomposites with different amount of AT (0.2%, 0.5%, 1%, 2%) were characterized by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) methods. It was found that the crystallization temperature for PET/AT nanocomposites with 0.2% and 0.5% content of AT were higher than pure PET and the rate of crystallization of all PET/AT nanocomposite samples increased significantly which indicated that attapulgite could be used as an effective nucleating agent in PET. However, with the addition of AT, smaller crystalline size, more crystalline defects and lower degree of crystallization was demonstrated.