Evaluating the Performance of a Semiaromatic/Aliphatic Polyamide Blend: The Case for Polyphthalamide (PPA) and Polyamide 4,10 (PA410).

This paper studies the structure-property-processing relationship of polyphthalamide (PPA) PPA/polyamide 4,10 (PA410) blends, via co-relating their thermal-mechanical properties with their morphology, crystallization, and viscoelastic properties. When compared to neat PPA, the blends show improved processability with a lower processing temperature (20 °C lower than neat PPA) along with a higher modulus/strength and heat deflection temperature (HDT). The maximum tensile modulus is that of the 25PPA/75PA410 blend, ~3 GPa, 25% higher than neat PPA (~2.4 GPa). 25PPA/75PA410 also exhibits the highest HDT (136 °C) among all the blends, being 11% more than PPA (122 °C). The increase in the thermo-mechanical properties of the blends is explained by the partial miscibility between the two polymers. The blends improve the processing performance of PPA and broaden its applicability.