| Abstract: | An in situ solid‐state polymerization process was developed to produce long glass fiber reinforced poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) composites. As reported in our last article, one advantage of this new process is that the good wetting of reinforcing fiber can be obtained for using low‐viscosity oligomer as raw materials. In this article, the grafting of PET macromolecular chain onto the surface of reinforcing glass fiber during in situ solid‐state polycondensation (SSP) will be investigated, which was believed to be another advantage for this new process and should be very important for thermoplastic composite. The reinforcing glass fiber after removing ungrafted PET from a long glass fiber reinforced PET composite by solvent extraction was investigated by SEM, pyrolysis‐gas chromatography mass spectrometry (Py‐GC/MS), DSC, and FTIR. The information from morphology of SEM photos of glass fiber surface, the spectrum of Py‐GC/MS, the melt peak at differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) curve, and the spectrum of Fourier transform infrared Raman spectroscopy (FTIR) gave a series evidence to prove the presence of grafted PET layer on the surface of silane‐coupling‐treated glass fiber. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 99: 775–781, 2006 |
