Clustering of Coated Droplets in Clay-Filled Polymer Blends

The selective positioning of clay platelets at the polymer/polymer interface in a blend with drop/matrix morphology has a contrasting effect: on the one hand, it promotes a refinement of the morphology during the intense flows which occur during melt compounding; on the other hand, it induces coarsening in the course of prolonged slow flows experienced during rheological analysis. Rather than to a usual coalescence process, the increase of the average sizes of the dispersed phase is primarily due to a clustering mechanism of clay-coated droplets, which keep their individuality inside the clusters because of the elastic connotation of the layered interface.