Investigation of the Effect of Titanium Dioxide on Optical Aspects and Physical and Mechanical Characteristics of ABS Polymer

Acrylonitryl-butadiene-styrene (ABS) is an engineering polymer with intrinsic yellowness and translucency due to blue wavelength absorption and partial light transmission, respectively. Generally, using titanium dioxide pigment helps to whiten ABS polymer and reduce its intrinsic yellowness. Also, it can impart opacity to polymeric parts. However, it must be considered that this pigment may cause some unfavorable effects in ABS parts. In this article, effects of surface treatment type and content of TiO2 pigment on optical aspects of a general purpose ABS have been investigated. In addition, physical and mechanical characteristics including tensile strength, izod impact strength and Rockwell hardness of the polymer have been studied. By adding titanium dioxide pigment opacity and whitening index increased and yellowness index decreased. It is important to note that surface treatment type of titanium dioxide pigment had no considerable effect on optical properties of titanium dioxide pigmented ABS polymer. The results showed that arising content of organic and inorganic surface treated TiO2 pigments up to 0.5% and 1.5%, respectively, causes to increase impact strength and decrease yield stress and maximum strain of pigmented ABS samples. Above these percentages, impact strength decreased due to agglomeration and decreasing inter-particle spacing. Also hardness of all the ABS samples reduced in the presence of inorganic and organic treated titanium dioxide pigments.