A New Microcellular Injection Molding Process for Polycarbonate Using Water as the Physical Blowing Agent

Jun Peng,1,2 Lih-Sheng Turng,1 Xiang-Fang Peng2 1 Polymer Engineering Center, University of WisconsinMadison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706 National Engineering Research Center of Novel Equipment for Polymer Processing, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
2

This article presents a new process for producing microcellular injection molded plastic parts using water as the physical blowing agent and micro-scaled particles as the cell nucleating agents. Distilled water with dissolved salt were fed through the hopper of an injection molding machine at a preset rate and mixed with polycarbonate (PC) in the machine barrel. Microcellular PC tensile bars were then injection molded with different shot volumes, water/salt solution feed rates, and salt concentrations. Tiny salt crystals of 10 20 lm recrystallized during molding acted as nucleating agents in the PC foamed parts. The surface roughness, mechanical properties, and microstructure of the solid and foamed parts were measured and compared with microcellular injection molded parts using supercritical uid (SCF) nitrogen as the physical blowing agent. At a similar weight reduction of about 10%, the water foamed PC parts have a smooth surface comparable to that of solid injection molded parts. They also possess similar, if not better, mechanical properties compared to SCF nitrogen foamed PC parts. Without the nucleating agent, PC/water foamed parts exhibit much larger and fewer bubbles within the molded parts. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 52:14641473, 2012. 2012 Society
of Plastics Engineers

INTRODUCTION Microcellular injection molding is capable of fabricating lightweight, dimensionally stable plastic parts while
Correspondence to: Lih-Sheng Turng; e-mail: turng@engr.wisc.edu or Xiang-Fang Peng; e-mail: pmxfpeng@scut.edu.cn Contract grant sponsor: China Scholarship Council; contract grant sponsor: National Nature Science Foundation of China; contract grant numbers: 51073061, 21174044; contract grant sponsor: Nature Science Foundation of Guangdong Province in China; contract grant number: 9151064004000010; contract grant sponsor: Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities; contract grant number: 2011ZZ0011. DOI 10.1002/pen.23092 Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). C 2012 Society of Plastics Engineers V

using less material and saving energy. In the most widely used commercial microcellular injection molding process, the polymer melt is blended with a supercritical uid (SCF, usually nitrogen or carbon dioxide) in the machine barrel to create a single-phase solution [15]. In the SCF state, SCF nitrogen or carbon dioxide can be accurately metered into the machine barrel like a uid and yet quickly dissolved into the polymer melt like a gas to form a single-phase polymer/gas solution in the machine barrel. Upon injection, the sudden change in pressure and temperature as the polymer/gas solution enters the cavity triggers thermodynamic instability. As a result, cells start emerging from the polymer/gas solution through homogeneous and/or heterogeneous cell nucleation, which is followed by cell growth that helps to ll the entire cavity during the lling stage and continues to pack out the mold during the post-lling stage. Because cell expansion can compensate for material shrinkage, no packing pressure or pack/hold stage is needed. Furthermore, with the SCF serving as a plasticizer, the melt viscosity and transition temperature of the polymer also decrease. Accordingly, this technology enables an injection molding process with lower processing temperatures and pressures, leading to a reduction in the clamp tonnage requirement, cycle time, and energy consumption [6, 7]. In addition, the uniform packing resulting from cell growth throughout the entire part leads to reduced residual stresses and greatly improves dimensional stability [8, 9]. However, the benets of this technology also come with some limitations, notably a slightly rough surface nish with swirling patterns and sliver streaks. For applications with strict appearance requirements, the surface swirl marks of the molded part limit the adoption of microcellular injection molding unless the surface quality can be improved with other techniques. In order to eliminate the surface defects of microcellular injection molded components, several approaches previously used for structural foam molding or newly developed techniques
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designed to improve the surface quality of microcellular injection molded parts have been employed. These approaches include the following: hot/cold mold cycling [10], expanding mold, insulating lm coating [11, 12], mold surface treatment [13], co-injection molding [14], gas counter-pressure [15, 16], etc. MOTIVATION AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION The relatively rough surface characteristics of microcellular injection molded parts are mainly due to gas emerging from the polymer melt as well as cells nucleating and forming at the advancing melt front during the lling stage. Those nucleated cells at the melt front are rst pushed and elongated toward the mold surface due to fountain ow behavior and subsequently trapped, collapsed, and stretched by the incoming melt. Combined with escaped gas from the polymer/gas solution near the part surface, silver streaks and swirling patterns are formed at the partmold interface. Therefore, in order to improve the surface quality of microcellular injection molded parts, one needs to prevent gas from coming out of the polymer melt or delay cell nucleation during the mold lling process. Once a solid, unfoamed skin layer is established due to solidication after the polymer melt contacts the cold mold walls, subsequent cell nucleation and growth in the hot core will not affect the external surface of the microcellular injection molded part. To reduce the amount of gas trapped on the partmold interface and develop a relatively simple microcellular injection molding process without dedicated SCF generation and injection systems, attempts were made to use water as the physical blowing agent assisted by recrystallized salt particles as the nucleating agent to injection mold foamed polycarbonate (PC) parts. Water basically can be used as either a chemical blowing agent or a physical blowing agent. Water has been widely employed as a chemical blowing agent to produce rigid polyurethane foams, in which water reacts with diisocyanate, thus resulting in reaction products of gaseous carbon dioxide and polyurea [17, 18]. On the other hand, water is also capable of acting as a physical blowing agent for rigid polyurethane foams that contain a small amount of water in bamboo residues [19, 20]. In polystyrene foam production, water expandable polystyrene (WEPS) beads containing small water droplets as the blowing agent expand when heated above the glass transition temperature. Those tiny water droplets are encapsulated in beads via suspension polymerization of styrene monomers in an emulsion [21, 22]. To trap more water in the polystyrene beads, nanoclay and starch have been used to increase the water content before bead expansion [2325]. Unlike SCF nitrogen or carbon dioxide, water does not dissolve into or emerge from the polymer melt easily or quickly, which results in a slower cell nucleation rate and thus reduced cells at the melt front. As will be discussed
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later, most of the water in the machine barrel transforms from water droplets into tiny pressurized vapor droplets dispersed in the polymer melt as the temperature and pressure increase from the metering zone to the machine nozzle. Even when cells are formed at the advancing melt front as driven by expanding water vapor in the polymer melt, a couple of factors unique to water and its phase change help to reduce the surface roughness. First, as the water vapor-lled cells at the melt front touch the mold wall, the sudden temperature drop forces the vapor to condense into liquid. Such a phase change induces a large volume contraction in the cells, compared to cells lled with nitrogen that stay in gaseous form, thereby minimizing the potential of surface defects. Second, any water vapor that co-exists with the melt or escapes from the cells could serve as a lubricant at the partmold interface before and after it is transformed into water. The high heat capacity of water or high energy content of water vapor helps to keep the polymer warm at the partmold interface, an effect similar to adding an insulating layer on the mold surface or temporarily heating up the mold walls. Finally, the clarity of PC resin makes it easier to visualize the foamed structure within the parts while the relatively high processing temperature of PC is desirable for generating high pressure water vapor to facilitate effective foaming. The relatively short contact time between PC and water also reduces the potentially negative effects associated with hydrolytic degradation or corrosion. In the present study, distilled water was employed in the injection molding of microcellular PC parts using a typical injection molding machine with the addition of a valve and meter mounted on top of the machine hopper to dispense the water and control its feed rate. The surface roughness, mechanical properties, and microstructures of PC parts molded by water-foaming microcellular injection molding were measured and compared with parts produced by conventional solid injection molding and with the prevailing microcellular injection molding process using SCF nitrogen as a physical blowing agent. In addition, the effects of having the nucleating agent, salt concentrations, water feed rates, and shot volumes on cell size and cell density in foamed PC parts are also presented.

EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES Melt Processing A commercial grade PC from SABIC Holding Europe BV (Lexan 141) with a melt ow rate of 10.5 g/10 min (3008C/1.2 kg) was used in this study. Hi-Grade Evaporated Salt (NaCl) was purchased from Cargill Salt. The original size range (from 200 to 600 lm) and size distribution of the NaCl particles in terms of weight percent retained are tabulated in Table 1 [26]. Tensile test bars
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TABLE 1. Size range and distribution of salt (NaCl) particles using different mesh size sieves. Mesh opening (lm) 590 420 300 210 Percent retained 1 21 58 16 4 FIG. 1. Experimental schematic of injection molding using water as the blowing agent.

Sieve analysis is reported in terms of weight percent retained [26].

(ASTM D638-03, Type I) of solid and foamed PC were injection molded using an Arburg Allrounder 320S (Lossburg, Germany) molding machine. The injection molding machine was equipped with a shut-off nozzle for the molding experiments. The shutoff nozzle was adopted to maintain high pressure in the barrel and prevent water from foaming before injection and prevent the polymer melt from drooling during screw retreat. A commercially available microcellular injection molding process (MuCell) was employed to fabricate microcellular injection molded PC-N tensile test bars, with N denoting SCF nitrogen. Water-assisted microcellular injection molded PC parts (PC-W) were produced using the injection molding set-up shown in Fig. 1. Water was used as the physical blowing agent. Initially dissolved and subsequently recrystallized salt crystals acted as nucleating agents. The injection molding parameters used in molding the solid and foamed PC parts are listed in Table 2, together with the calculated nitrogen and water contents in terms of weight percentage (the weight of salt in the water was ignored). The water was pumped into the injection barrel at high temperature, and the barrel temperatures from hopper to nozzle were 38, 290, 310, 315, 315, and 3008C, respectively. At relatively high temperatures and pressures in the injection barrel, the liquid salt solution quickly transformed into pressurized vapor and recrystallized salt crystals, which uniformly dispersed in the PC melt matrix.

The circumference speed of the injection screw was 15 m/min and the injection speed was 60 cm3/s, resulting in a very short melt mixing time (less than 1 min). Depending on the water or SCF content and expandability of each material, many different shot volumes were tried and, in the end, two shot volumes (19.5 and 20.5 cm3) were selected to ensure maximum material savings and complete lling of the tensile test bar cavity without shrinkage. As shown in Table 2, the average weight reduction of microcellular injection molded PC-N and water-assisted microcellular injection molded PC-W foamed parts was approximately 10% compared to conventional solid injection molded samples. The weight reduction was calculated on the basis of only the tensile bars; i.e., without the runners and sprue. For all of the molding experiments, the volumetric injection ow rate for foamed parts was set at 60 cm3/s and the nozzle (melt) temperature and coolant (mold) temperature were set at 3008C and 858C, respectively. Since the expansion of cells compensated for the volumetric shrinkage of the solidifying melt, no packing stage was needed for the microcellular injection molding processes using water and SCF nitrogen. For the conventional solid injection molding process, a packing time of 4.3 s was used. Finally, the cooling time was set at 40 s for all molding trials. Thirty samples were collected during the course of each molding trial after discarding the rst 15 samples.

TABLE 2. Injection molding parameters of solid and foamed PC parts with nitrogen and water as blowing agents. Salt concentration in solution (wt%) 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 Salt solution feed rate (ml/min) 0.5 0.5 1.0 1.0 0.5 0.5 1.0 1.0 Shot volume (cm3) 20.5 19.5 20.5 19.5 20.5 19.5 20.5 19.5 20.5 19.5 Nitrogen or water (wt%) 0.22 1.89 1.98 3.77 3.96 1.89 1.98 3.77 3.96 Packing time (s) 4.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Back pressure (bar) 10 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55

Samples PC-S PC-N PC-W-1 PC-W-2 PC-W-3 PC-W-4 PC-W-5 PC-W-6 PC-W-7 PC-W-8

S, N, and W denote solid, nitrogen, and water, respectively. Arabic numbers denote the various molding trials for foamed PC parts using water as the blowing agent.

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FIG. 2. Schematic of surface roughness testing and three SEM testing locations.

Testing Techniques Two-dimensional surface roughness (2D-SR) measurements were taken via a surface roughness analyzer (Surfan Alyzer 4000). This instrument amplies the deection of the stylus and calculates the surface roughness parameter, Ra, from the reading. Ra is the arithmetic mean of the departures of the prole from the mean line and is used in this study to quantify the roughness of the samples. The stylus traversed 2.5 mm in the melt ow direction on the sample surface at a xed rate of 0.25 mm/s. The testing trace was at the center of the tensile bars along the melt owing direction, as indicated in Fig. 2. Fifteen samples were analyzed for each molding trial condition and the average surface roughness was calculated and reported. An optical microscope (Olympus) with a magnication of 100 was used to examine the threedimensional surface roughness (3D-SR). The mechanical properties (specic Youngs modulus, specic tensile strength, and strain-at-break) were measured at room temperature with a 50 kN load cell on an Instron Model 3369 tensile tester. The cross-head speed was set at 50 mm/min for solid and foamed PC samples. All tests were carried out according to the ASTM D63808 standard. Ten samples from each molding trial were tested and the average results were reported. The cell morphologies (porous microstructures) were observed by a scanning electron microscope (SEM; Model LEO 1530, JEOL, Japan), operated at an accelerating voltage of 3 kV. The as-molded samples were then cryogenically fractured at three locations on the tensile bar with liquid nitrogen, as shown in Fig. 2. After the cross-sections perpendicular to the ow direction were sputter coated with gold, the SEM images from those cross-sections were taken to reveal the cell morphology. The average cell size and cell density were analyzed using an image analysis tool (UTHSCSA Image Tool). RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Surface Roughness The 2D-SR was characterized at the middle location of the solid and foamed injection molded tensile test bars along the ow direction. The arithmetic surface roughnesses, averaged across 15 of the solid and foamed samDOI 10.1002/pen

ples, are plotted in Fig. 3. It is evident that solid PC samples exhibit the lowest surface roughness. However, it is also apparent that various PC-W parts also exhibit a low surface roughness comparable to that of solid PC parts. In comparison with their conventional solid or water-foamed counterparts, PC-N foamed parts using SCF nitrogen as the blowing agent possess a rougher part surface due to their characteristic swirling patterns. Note that the waterfoamed PC-W-1 through PC-W-8 parts all have similar surface qualities despite variations in salt concentrations, water feed rates, and shot volumes. This suggests that the new process is fairly robust in producing foamed parts with a desirable surface quality. The optical micrographs of the surfaces of the solid and microcellular injection molded PC-N and PC-W parts are shown in Fig. 4. Figure 4ac clearly shows the similar surface characteristics of solid and water-foamed parts (Fig. 4a and c) as well as the trapped and deformed cells on the microcellular injection molded PC-N parts (Fig. 4b). As elucidated previously, the relatively rougher surface characteristics for microcellular injection molded PC-N parts is mainly due to nitrogen escaping out of the PC/ nitrogen solution and nucleated cells (bubbles) at the melt fronts being trapped, collapsed, and stretched at the interface between part and mold. Under high back pressure (55 bars in this case) and using a specially designed screw, a single phase PC/nitrogen solution was formed in

FIG. 3. Two-dimensional surface roughness of tensile bars injection molded with an injection speed of 60 cm3/s and a mold temperature of 858C. S, N, and W denote solid, nitrogen, and water vapor, respectively. POLYMER ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE -2012 1467

TABLE 3. Average part weight and weight reduction of solid and foamed PC parts with SCF nitrogen and water as the blowing agents. Average part weight (g) 9.90 8.54 9.16 8.75 9.08 Weight reduction (%) 213.7% 27.5% 211.6% 28.3% Average part weight (g) 8.81 9.08 8.76 9.10 8.84 Weight reduction (%) 211.0% 28.3% 211.5% 28.1% 210.7%

Samples PC-S PC-N PC-W-1 PC-W-2 PC-W-3

Samples PC-W-4 PC-W-5 PC-W-6 PC-W-7 PC-W-8

S, N, and W denote solid, nitrogen, and water vapor, respectively.

solidies. Thus, a typical multi-layered structure is formed with skin layers of smaller or no visible cells sandwiching a center layer with more and larger cells. Conceivably, some small bubbles in the skin layer of the tensile test bar were ruptured at the partmold interface because of the friction between the PC melt and the mold wall. Thus, the gas could diffuse out of the PC/nitrogen solution and be captured at the interface, causing the swirls on the surface of the parts. On the other hand, the water and PC melt could not quickly form a single-phase solution like PC/nitrogen in the barrel due to waters low solubility and long absorption time in PC. Based on the PC material data sheet [27], the 24-h water absorption of PC based on ASTM D570 is 0.15 wt% and the equilibrium water absorptions at 258C and 1008C are 0.35 wt% and 0.58 wt%, respectively. With the aim of developing a simple foaming process, distilled water or a water/salt solution was simply dispensed into the machine barrel through the hopper (metering zone), unlike SCF nitrogen, which was injected into the mixing zone of the machine barrel. Recall that the melt temperature and the back pressure within the machine barrel are 3008C and 55 bar, respectively, whereas the critical point of water is at 3748C and 228

FIG. 4. Three-dimensional surface quality of tensile test bars by optical microscopy: (a) PC-S, (b) PC-N, and (c) PC-W-2 at a magnication of 100. The white scale bar denotes 100 lm.

the machine barrel. When the polymer/gas solution was injected into the mold cavities at atmospheric pressure, thermodynamic instability was triggered and nitrogen started to emerge from the supersaturated solution to form cells at the melt fronts and within the melt. Those tiny bubbles forming at the melt fronts will end up at the interface between part and mold due to fountain ow and be immediately frozen under a relatively cold mold temperature (858C). Meanwhile, the cells in the center of the tensile test bars continue to expand before the material
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FIG. 5. The mechanical properties of solid and foam injection molded tensile bars with SCF nitrogen and water as blowing agents. S, N, and W refer to solid, nitrogen, and water, respectively.

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TABLE 4. Average mechanical properties of solid and foamed PC parts with SCF nitrogen and water as the blowing agents. Youngs modulus (MPa) PC-S PC-N PC-W-1 PC-W-2 PC-W-3 PC-W-4 PC-W-5 PC-W-6 PC-W-7 PC-W-8 1.00 8.83 1.01 9.72 9.86 9.66 9.86 9.52 1.00 9.66 E03 E02 E03 E02 E02 E02 E02 E02 E03 E02 Specic Youngs modulus (MPa m3/kg) 8.69 8.89 9.52 9.56 9.34 9.43 9.34 9.34 9.45 9.39 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 Ultimate Strength (MPa) 6.39 4.70 5.17 4.90 4.99 4.91 5.09 4.87 5.11 4.88 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 E01 Specic ultimate strength (MPa m3/kg) 5.55 4.74 4.86 4.81 4.73 4.79 4.82 4.78 4.83 4.75 E02 E02 E02 E02 E02 E02 E02 E02 E02 E02 Strain at break (mm/mm) 2.48 0.24 0.18 0.16 0.17 0.16 0.17 0.15 0.15 0.14

S, N, and W denote solid, nitrogen, and water, respectively. Arabic numbers denote the various molding trials for foamed PC parts with water as the blowing agent.

bar according to the water phase diagram. Hence, the initial water temperature and pressure in the barrel are not high enough for water to convert to the supercritical state. As listed in Table 2, the water weight percentage used in this study is in the range of 24 wt%, which greatly exceeds equilibrium for water absorption. Based on visual observations of the purged melt and the water phase diagram, the water at 3008C and 55 bar within the machine barrel prior to injection was in the form of small pressurized vapor droplets dispersing in a continuous PC matrix. When a PC/water mixture is injected into the mold cavity, a sudden pressure drop will allow the small water vapor droplets to turn into expanding vapor bubbles in the PC matrix. In the meantime, tiny salt particles recrystallized from the water/salt solution will act as nucleating agents, thus greatly reducing the cell size and increasing the cell density in microcellular PC-W parts. The effect of nucleating agents will be discussed later. Part Weight and Part Weight Reduction Table 3 lists the values of average part weight and weight reduction of solid (PC-S) and microcellular PC-N and PC-W tensile test bar parts not including the runner and sprue. As can be seen in Table 3, the weight reduction of microcellular injection molded PC-N and PC-W parts strongly depend on the shot volume and marginally on the salt content in the PC-W parts. The reason why microcellular injection molded PC-N parts had the highest part weight reduction (13.7%) was due to its lower melt density with the presence of SCF nitrogen. Likewise, PCW-1 had the lowest part weight reduction (7.5%) due to a higher shot volume, a heavier salt content, and a lesser content of water vapor. Tensile Properties The representative stressstrain curves of solid and foamed samples (PC-N and PC-W-2) are featured in Fig. 5. Whereas only PC-W-2 is presented here, other PC-W
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parts have exhibited similar tensile properties and behavior. Table 4 tabulates the values of average mechanical properties such as Youngs modulus, ultimate strength, and strain at break of tensile test bars according to the ASTM D638-03 standard. Table 4 also lists the specic Youngs modulus and ultimate strength to take into account the lighter part weight and lesser material used in the foamed parts. In comparison with PC-S and PC-N, PC-W parts have a higher specic Youngs modulus conceivably because of the addition of salt crystals (1020 lm), which not only serve as nucleating agents but also as rigid reinforcing llers. It is possible that there might be other reasons leading to the increase in modulus as well. It is typical for polymer composites with rigid mineral additives to exhibit a higher Youngs modulus at the expense of ductility. The specic Youngs modulus of PC-W parts varies with different salt concentrations (2 and 4 wt%), salt solution feed rates (0.5 and 1.0 ml/min), and shot volumes (20.5 and 19.5 cm3). Samples with a salt concentration of 2 wt% and a feed speed of 0.5 ml/min (i.e., PC-W-2) exhibit the highest specic Youngs modulus. Too many salt crystals or too much water vapor were found to decrease the specic Youngs modulus of the microcellular parts. As expected, solid injection molded parts have a higher specic ultimate strength than foamed tensile test bars. The specic strain at break of foamed parts (both PC-W and PC-N) decreased sharply as compared to solid injection molded parts. Apparently, the cells within the foamed

FIG. 6. Optical microscopic images with a magnication of 3.53: (a) PC using distilled water as the blowing agent, (b) PC-N using SCF nitrogen as the blowing agent, and (c) PC-W-2 using water as the blowing agent and recrystallized salt crystals as nucleating agents. The black scale bar denotes 3 mm.

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FIG. 7. SEM images of fractured surfaces in the cross-section direction of PC-W-2 microcellular injection molded tensile bars using water as the blowing agent and salt crystals as the nucleation agent. Images (a), (b), and (c) denote samples along the melt ow direction of the tensile bar. The black scale bar denotes 200 lm. Image (d) shows recrystallized salt crystals (1020 lm) on the cell walls. The black scale bar denotes 20 lm.

FIG. 8. SEM images of fractured surface structures in the cross-section direction of PC-N microcellular injection molded tensile bars using nitrogen as the blowing agent. Images (a), (b), and (c) denote samples along the melt ow direction of the tensile bar. The black scale bar denotes 200 lm. Image (d) shows the magnication of the skin layer of sample (c) in the black square. The black scale bar denotes 20 lm.

part negatively affect the specic ultimate strength and strain at break as they reduce the effective cross-sectional area or serve as stress concentration points. Broadly speaking, these two kinds of foamed parts (PC-W and PC-N) have similar values of ultimate strength. The next section will present the microstructure of cells (size and density) and the multi-layered structure of tensile test bars, which inuence the mechanical properties of the foamed parts. It should be pointed out that PC is a hygroscopic material and for retention of mechanical properties the moisture content should not be more than 0.01%. Microcellular processing of PC using water as a physical blowing agent may potentially cause hydrolytic degradation of the polymer, thereby leading to inferior material properties. Thus, efforts were made to pre-dry the PC granules to remove any moisture prior to injection molding of PC foamed parts. Surprisingly, PC-W foamed parts have tensile properties similar to PC-N foamed parts, as shown in Table 4. This suggests that the effect of hydrolytic degradation is minimal, probably due to the short contact time (less than 1 min) between the resin and water. In fact, the main reason for the deterioration of material properties results from the voids generated by the foaming agents (either nitrogen or water). Morphology of the Fractured Surface and Microstructures In addition to SEM, optical microscopy was employed to study cell size and density across the full thickness of the PC foamed parts with two different blowing agents, both with and without salt in the water. In particular, Fig. 6ac shows the cell morphologies of PC-W without salt in the water, PC-N using nitrogen as a blowing agent, and PC-W-2 with a water/salt solution. While only PC-W-2 is shown in Fig. 6, other PC-W parts have similar structures at 3100 magnication. As can be seen in Fig. 6, the cell size was reduced and the cell density was increased sharply with the presence of recrystallized salt particles as nucleating agents. Cryogenically fractured cross-section surfaces perpendicular to the ow direction were examined using SEM at three different locations along the length of the tensile test bar (cf. Fig. 2) to further compare the effectiveness of SCF nitrogen and water as blowing agents. Figures 79 show the SEM microstructure images of PC-W-2, PC-N, and all of the PC-W samples. All foamed PC-W and PCN parts exhibited a multi-layer structure; namely, a foamed core region sandwiched between barely foamed skin layers. The skin layer possesses a higher density resulting from fewer cells, whereas the core layer contains most of the cells. Figure 7ac shows the evolution of cell size along the ow direction of the tensile test bar. It can be seen that the cell size increases from near the gate (Fig. 7a) to the middle of the part (Fig. 7b), and stayed at approximately the same size toward the end of the part as shown in Fig. 7c. The smaller cell size near the gate is
DOI 10.1002/pen FIG. 9. Representative values of (a) the average cell size in the core layer along with the standard deviation, and (b) the cell density in the core layer at three different locations along the ow direction of PC-W-2 and PC-N foamed samples based on SEM images.

probably due to the high melt pressure. In addition, the recrystallized salt crystals were found on the cell walls (cf. Fig. 7d), suggesting that they served as nucleating agents. The sizes of salt crystals shown in Fig. 7d ranged from 10 to 20 lm and were almost 30 times smaller than their original size as listed in Table 1. Figure 8 presents the microstructures of cells of PC-N foamed parts using SCF nitrogen as the blowing agent. The average sizes of nitrogen bubbles are similar to those shown in Fig. 7ac. However, it should be pointed out that at the end of the tensile test bar there is a thin layer of concentrated tiny cells near the part surface (cf. Fig. 8c and d). The exact cause for these tiny cells remains unclear although it is thought to result from a high degree of deformation that triggered cell nucleation followed by rapid cooling that froze the cell structure. Although the volumetric injection ow rate used in this study was set at 60 cm3/s, the actual ow rate might have increased toward the end of mold cavity lling owing to the expanding volume through foaming. The average cell size and cell density of microcellular injection molded PC-N and PC-W parts in the core region at the three test locations are plotted in Fig. 9. Figure 10 presents the microstructure of all waterfoamed microcellular injection molded parts (PC-W-1
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FIG. 10. SEM images of the fractured surface structure in the cross-section direction of water-foamed microcellular injection molded PC-W tensile bars using water as the blowing agent and recrystallized salt crystals as nucleating agents. Images (ah) show samples PC-W-1 to PC-W-8, respectively. The black scale bar denotes 100 lm.

through PC-W-8) based on the processing conditions shown in Table 2. SEM specimens cryogenically fractured at location 2 (cf. Fig. 2) along the ow direction were examined. When the shot volume was set at 20.5 cm3, the cell sizes and cell densities did not change much with various water/salt solution feed rates and salt concentrations. At a reduced shot volume, say 19.5 cm3, the cell
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density increased sharply and also uctuated with different processing conditions. At the same salt concentration of 2.0 wt% and a shot volume of 19.5 cm3, PC-W-4 (Fig. 10d) molded with a 1.0 ml/min water/salt solution feed rate had more cells than PC-W-2 (Fig. 10b), which was molded using a 0.5 ml/min solution feed rate. However, at a higher salt concentration of 4.0 wt%, samples (PCDOI 10.1002/pen

W-6) molded with a 0.5 ml/min water/salt solution feed rate appeared to exhibit more cells than that with a 1.0 ml/min solution feed rate. The reason for this reversed trend requires further study, although there seems to be an optimal salt amount for the cell density because both PC-W-4 and PC-W-6 have the same amount of salt within the parts. CONCLUSION This article introduces a novel water-foamed microcellular injection molding process to fabricate PC foamed parts using water as the blowing agent and recrystallized salt crystals as the nucleating agent. The setup of a solution dispensing valve and meter on top of a conventional injection molding hopper is much simpler and more costeffective than a commercial microcellular injection molding system. A weight reduction of approximately 10% can easily be achieved by adjusting the shot volume. In comparison to commercial microcellular injection molded parts using nitrogen as the physical blowing agent, PC-W parts exhibit a smooth surface comparable to that of solid PC parts. PC-W parts also have a stronger specic Youngs modulus and specic ultimate strength than commercial microcellular injection molded PC-N parts. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The PC Lexan 141 material was generously donated by SABIC Innovative Plastics. REFERENCES
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DOI 10.1002/pen

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