Effect of high content of carbon black on non-isothermal crystallization behavior of poly(ethylene terephthalate)

With the aid of co-rotating twin screw extruder, poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET)/carbon black (CB) masterbatches were fabricated through melt-compounding using a separate feeding and metering technique and their homogeneous dispersion morphologies were confirmed by scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Moreover, the ultimate content of CB in the masterbatches was verified via thermogravimetric analysis method. The non-isothermal crystallization process of pristine PET and PET/CB masterbatch were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry and the different methods such as Jeziorny modified Avrami equation, Ozawa equation, and the method developed by Mo were employed to analyze their non-isothermal crystallization kinetics. The results show that CB particles uniformly dispersed in PET matrix act as heterogeneous nucleating agents, while crystallization activation energy (ΔE) of PET/CB masterbatch is much greater than that of virgin PET according to Kissinger formula, Takhor model, and Augis-Bennett model. Whereas, the results obtained from the above mentioned three methods simultaneously demonstrate the addition of CB greatly increases crystallization temperature and crystallinity and accelerates crystallization rate. The results reveal that crystal growth has little effect on the crystallization rate and crystal nucleation dominates the crystallization process of PET/CB masterbatch containing very high CB loading (20 wt%).