Rheological control in foaming polymeric materials: I. Amorphous polymers

The influence of rheological properties, especially melt strength, on foam structures, such as cell size, cell density and cell size distribution, of amorphous polymer was investigated. The rheology of polystyrene (PS) was controlled by molecular modification with free radical reaction, and PS with long chain branching (LCB) level ranging from 0.15 to 1.6 branching point per 10⁴ carbon atom was gotten. The shear and elongational rheology were found to be dependent on the LCB structure, and the strain hardening behavior of modified samples in transient elongational viscosity confirmed the existence of long branched chain. The effects of chain structure and foaming conditions such as temperature and pressure were studied by the analysis on the foam structures obtained by supercritical CO₂. The experimental results revealed that increasing LCB level would decrease cell size, make cell size distribution narrower and slightly increase cell density. The effects of chain topology on the foam structures were also investigated by numerical simulation, where Pom-Pom model was used to describe the effect of backbone length and arm length. The dependence of cell size on the arm length was consistently observed in experiments and simulation. It suggested that the arm length had greater influence on the cell radius than the backbone length. Therefore, the relationship among foam structures, rheological properties and molecular structures can be established from both experiments and simulation, which can be used as a guidance to control the foam structure by designing and controlling the molecular structures and the corresponding rheological properties.