PEEL PROPERTIES OF MODIFIED PE-PP BLENDS

Abstract: Interest in the peel properties of thin polymer films for sealed packaging has increased dramatically over the past year due to increasing demand, particularly in food preservation and medical applications. For customer convenience in all packaging applications and to ensure sterility in medical device packaging, seals should be as easy to peel as possible without compromising functionality. To achieve the desired peel effect, 6 modified blends of PE and PP were prepared using 3 different commercially available modifiers at 2 different concentrations. The first modifier was an ethylene-based α-olefin copolymer, the other two were ethylene-based octene-1 plastomers and were added at 10% and 20%. The percentage of PE was set at 30 %, and the percentage of PP was 50% or 60%, depending on the modifier content. The prepared blends were extruded and granulated using a twin screw extruder. The granules were pressed into thin films, which were analyzed for their tensile properties by standard tensile tests and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), heat sealing and peeled on an universal testing machine, for their chemical structure by Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy (FT -IR), and for their thermal properties by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA).