Effect of temperature on the impact behavior of PVC/ASA binary blends with various ASA terpolymer contents

Abstract Acrylonitrile-styrene-acrylic (ASA) terpolymer has a typical core-shell structure with poly(butyl acrylate) (PBA) as the soft core and styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN) copolymer as the hard shell. The impact behavior of poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC)/ASA binary blends with various ASA terpolymer contents was systematically investigated at three different temperatures (23°C, 0°C, and –30°C). With the addition of 30 phr ASA terpolymer, the impact strength of the blends increased by almost 45 times at 23°C and 29 times at 0°C compared with the neat PVC, respectively. Herein, ASA terpolymer particles were related to each other to form a percolation group and the stress field around the ASA particles was connected with each other, thereby more effectively served as the stress concentrators, exhibiting the highest toughening efficiency. In addition, the significantly improved toughness could also be attributed to the special core-shell structure of ASA terpolymer, as well as, a good miscibility between the PVC matrix and the SAN shell of the ASA terpolymer. However, the decreasing temperature limited the flexibility of the PBA chain, resulting in the insignificant role of ASA terpolymer in toughening PVC at –30°C. Moreover, the improvement in the toughness of the blends did not sacrifice its heat distortion temperature.