Supercritical CO2‐assisted extrusion foaming: A suitable process to produce very lightweight acrylic polymer micro foams

Abstract

A strategy of CO2-assisted extrusion foaming of PMMA-based materials was established to minimize both foam density and porosities dimension. First a highly CO2-philic block copolymer (MAM: PMMA-PBA-PMMA) was added in PMMA in order to improve CO2 saturation before foaming. Then the extruding conditions were optimized to maximize CO2 uptake and prevent coalescence. The extruding temperature reduction led to an increase of pressure in the barrel, favorable to cell size reduction. With the combination of material formulation and extruding strategy, very lightweight homogeneous foams with small porosities have been produced. Lightest PMMA micro foams (ρ = 0.06 g cm−3) are demonstrated with 7 wt% CO2 at 130°C and lightest blend micro foams (ρ = 0.04 g cm−3) are obtained at lower temperature (110°C, 7.7 wt% CO2). If MAM allows a reduction of Tfoaming, it also allows a much better cell homogeneity, an increase in cell density (e.g., from 3.6 107 cells cm−3 to 2 to 6 108 cells cm−3) and an overall decrease in cell size (from 100 to 40 μm). These acrylic foams produced through scCO2-assisted extrusion has a much lower density than those ever produced in batch (ρ ≥ 0.2 g cm−3).