Thermal behavior of polyethylene terephthalate/organoclay nanocomposites: investigating copolymers as matrices

Abstract Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)/clay nanocomposites have been widely studied. However, different PET copolymers are also produced in large scale but not commonly investigated as matrices for nanocomposites. In this work, PET‐based nanocomposites, with PET homopolymer and two PET copolymers as matrices, were prepared by melt blending with a commercial organoclay. The focus of this study was to investigate the thermal behavior of these materials by differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis and to provide a satisfactory crystallization kinetic modeling. X‐ray diffraction analysis showed that the nanocomposites exhibited clay intercalation. The glass transition temperature and the thermal stability of the materials decreased with an increase in clay content. The presence of clay did not affect the degree of crystallinity developed by the materials, although it caused the anticipation and acceleration of the crystallization events. A discussion is made about the application of a modified Avrami model for non‐isothermal crystallization and its validity. The modified Avrami model has proven to be a good choice for the non‐isothermal crystallization kinetic modeling of these nanocomposites under various heating/cooling rates, being useful for simulations under processing conditions.