%0 Journal Article
%T Morphology control of extruded polystyrene foams with benzene
%A B Klose
%A C Zhao
%A H-W Schmidt
%A K Kreger
%A M Aksit
%A V Altst£¿dt
%J Journal of Cellular Plastics
%@ 1530-7999
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0021955X19837508
%X Polystyrene is a low-priced, amorphous polymer, showing excellent foaming behavior. Polystyrene foams are widely used in a variety of applications including insulation panels for building and construction. In this context, foam morphology plays a significant role to tune the macroscopic properties of the foams and research focusses on the fabrication of foams with homogenous morphology and an average cell size distinctly below 100 ¦Ìm at densities lower than 100 kg/m3. Here, we demonstrate how 1,3,5-benzene-trisamides can be used as supramolecular foam nucleating agents to control the morphology of extruded amorphous polystyrene foams. Depending on the concentration and the processing temperature, benzene-trisamides can be homogeneously dissolved in the polystyrene melt. Upon cooling, the benzene-trisamides self-assemble into finely dispersed, solid supramolecular nano-objects, which subsequently act as nucleating sites for foam cell formation. Various concentrations of the benzene-trisamide-based additive were selected to systematically study the influence of the morphology of the extruded polystyrene foams. In the same way, neat polystyrene foams were produced as a reference. We found that for extruded polystyrene foams with 0.2 wt% of additive, the cell sizes were significantly reduced by a factor of 35 from 632 to 18 ¦Ìm compared to those of a neat extruded polystyrene reference foam
%K Polystyrene foams
%K 1
%K 3
%K 5-benzene-trisamides
%K foam nucleation
%K foam extrusion
%K morphology
%K nucleating agents
%K supramolecular additives
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021955X19837508