Modeling core-shell particle morphology of engineered polyolefin-acrylic particles for impact modification

Novel polyolefin-acrylic (POA) core-shell particles derived from polyolefin elastomers are being developed as impact modifiers for engineering plastics. However, good compatibility of POA particles in polymer matrices is critical to achieve desirable impact performance. We computed solubility parameters for the core, shell and matrix materials as a function of their chemical composition and input those values to Self Consistent Field Theory (SCFT) to investigate the role of shell composition and grafting on the particle surface morphology and compatibility of POA particles in the target matrix polymer. A comparison with microscopic images of POA particle core-shell morphology is also presented.