Influence of Ozone Treatment on the Surface Characteristics of Montmorillonite and the Thermal Stability of Montmorillonite/polypropylene Nanocomposites

In this work, the effect of ozone treatment of montmorillonite (MMT) on the surface characteristics of montmorillonite and the thermal stability of MMT/polypropylene (PP) nanocomposites was investigated. The surface properties of MMT were determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Also, the thermal stability of nanocomposites was investigated in thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). As a result, it was found that the silicate interlayers of the organically modified MMT (D-MMT) were increased by about 11, as compared with the MMT. Also, FT-IR showed that a new peaks at appeared due to the mode in the D-MMT The ozone treatment of the MMT led to an increase of SiO or groups on MMT surfaces, resulting in increasing the oxygen-containing functional groups on MMT. The ozonized MMT had higher thermal stability than that of untreated nanocomposites. This was due to the improvement of interfacial bonding strengths, resulting from the acid-base interfacial interactions between PP and MMT.