Reactive Spreading Dynamics of Molten Polymer Liquids

Despite the key to the adhesion between polymers and a plethora of materials, our understanding of reactive wetting is still rudimentary. In the present work, we report the reactive wetting dynamics of molten maleic anhydride-grafted polypropylene (MA-g-PP) liquids modeled by molecular-kinetic theory (MKT). The dependencies of the contact line friction (zeta) and viscosity (eta) were compared for reactive and nonreactive wetting polymer systems. Compared with linear dependencies of zeta and eta for the nonreactive wetting systems, the reactive wetting system presented a nonlinear relationship. In the capillary regime, the chemistry-affected regime is followed by a regime that is nearly not affected by chemical reactions, which is identified by the linear MKT. The formation of a new interface and the resulting entanglements of polymer chains in the chemistry-affected regime contribute to the dependence of zeta on eta in the capillary regime.