Phase volume and size effects on the terminal relaxation of ABS melts

The dynamical viscoelasticity of ABS melts with different particle size was investigated at various levels of rubbery phase contents. The effects of the rubber are more pronounced in the terminal zone: a transition from viscoelastic liquid to viscoelastic solid behavior was observed which can be interpreted as a physical gelation occurring at a critical rubbery phase content. This critical content resulted in being smaller in the case of smaller particles. A quantitative explanation of the experimental findings was proposed in terms of the average interparticle distance and overlapping of the chains grafted onto the neighboring rubber particles. The gel-like transition appeared to correspond to an approximately constant level of grafted chains overlapping.